Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Beignets Soufflés
Ingredients
Directions
Make the paste
Melt the butter with lemon peel, orange-flower water, sugar, salt, and water in a saucepan.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Stir in enough flour to form a thick paste.
Cook until the paste pulls away from the pan, then remove the mixture from heat.
Stir in 2 eggs.
Add 2 more eggs.
Mix until the paste is soft but not too thin.
Fry and serve
Spread the paste to about 1-inch thick on a dish.
Heat lard in a frying pan.
Use a teaspoon to scoop walnut-sized pieces of paste.
Drop the pieces into the hot lard.
Fry over low heat, stirring constantly until the fritters puff and turn golden.
Serve hot, dusted with sugar.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the thick paste whose starch sets around the steam, giving the fritters their structure.
- Eggs
- Add moisture and protein that help the paste puff and set with a tender interior.
- Butter
- Adds fat that softens the crumb and enriches the paste.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown as the fritters fry.
- Water
- Turns to steam during cooking, which pushes the paste up and makes it puff.
The step that matters
Fry over low heat, stirring constantly. Low heat lets the centre cook through and the steam expand the dough before the outside browns. Too much heat browns the surface quickly, leaving the inside raw and dense.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, lemon, sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, lemon, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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