Skip to main content
Dessert

Beignets Mignons

Small fried dough pieces flavored with lemon and brandy, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Beignets Mignons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix flour with the egg whites and yolks, salt, sugar, lemon peel, milk, and cream.

  2. Stir over low heat until thickened.

  3. Spread the mixture on a floured dish, sprinkle with flour, and let it cool.

  4. Cut into pieces with a pastry cutter.

Dip and fry

  1. For the dipping paste, mix 2 tablespoons flour, brandy, and salt with 2 eggs.

  2. Dip each piece into the paste.

  3. Fry until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve glazed with sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the dough, and the dipping paste coats each piece for frying.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape when cooled and cut.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown and glaze.
Brandy
Adds aroma to the dipping paste.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thickened. Egg proteins and starch set gradually; high heat can scramble the eggs or scorch the base before it thickens evenly, leaving lumps or a grainy texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, sugar, milk, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, milk, cream, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes