Name: Beignets a LA Gruyere {Cheese Fritters}
Ingredients: 1 lb choux-paste; 6 oz Gruyere cheese; 1 egg; soft breadcrumbs; ¼ teaspoon salt; Nepal pepper to taste; fat for frying

Why it works: Gruyere cheese and egg work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Beignets a LA Gruyere {Cheese Fritters}

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheese

Cut the cheese into slices about ¼ inch thick.
Use a pastry cutter to stamp out ovals from the cheese.
Wipe each piece with a dry cloth.

Coat and fry

Coat one side of each piece of cheese with choux-paste.
Roll in soft breadcrumbs.
Heat fat in a frying pan and fry until golden brown.
Drain on paper towels before serving.

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.

Gruyere cheese + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Gruyere cheese + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Choux-paste: Forms a soft, puffed coating that encloses the cheese while it fries.
Gruyere cheese: Provides the melting filling that becomes rich and creamy inside the fritter.
Soft breadcrumbs: Creates a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Egg: Binds the coating and helps the breadcrumbs adhere to the choux-paste.

The step that matters

Wipe each piece with a dry cloth. Surface moisture on the cheese can weaken adhesion of the choux-paste and breadcrumbs, so drying the slices helps the coating stay in place while frying.

“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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Beignets a LA Gruyere {Cheese Fritters}