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Beignets Von Fiscli

Fish beignets made from cold fish, breadcrumbs, butter, and seasonings, fried until golden and topped with Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beignets Von Fiscli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the remains of any cold fish.

  2. Mix with fine bread-crumbs, warmed butter, salt, pepper, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, and an egg to bind the mixture.

  3. Form shapes like small sausages.

  4. Roll them in egg and bread-crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in butter until golden.

  2. Grate Parmesan cheese over the top and garnish with crispy parsley.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the filling.
Fine bread-crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the coating set during frying.
Warmed butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the outside brown when fried.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and browns on the surface.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden. Frying over moderate heat lets the coating brown and crisp before the delicate fish filling overheats or breaks apart. Sustained heat sets the egg and crumb coating into a firm shell.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bread, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, parmesan cheese):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, parmesan cheese. 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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