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Dessert

Cheese Aigrettes

Cheese Aigrettes are fried cheese lumps made from a batter of flour, water, butter, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Aigrettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux base

  1. Combine the water and butter in a pan.

  2. Sift the flour.

  3. When the water boils, add the sifted flour and stir quickly until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan clean.

Add the flavourings and eggs

  1. Remove the pan from the heat, then mix in the cheese, cayenne, pepper, and salt.

  2. Mix in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly with a spoon until smooth.

  4. Let the mixture cool slightly.

Fry and serve

  1. Break the mixture into walnut-sized lumps.

  2. Fry the lumps in deep hot fat until golden.

  3. Serve hot or cold, neatly piled on a folded napkin.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Butter
Melts into the water to provide fat and richness in the dough.
Flour
Starch that thickens with the water and sets into the dough's structure.
Eggs
Bind the dough and, as they are beaten in, add structure and lift.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, enriching the dough.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully absorbed before the next is added; adding them too fast can break the emulsion and leave a loose, greasy dough that will not hold its shape when fried.

“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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