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Beignets De Panais

Parsnip fritters made by boiling parsnips, coating in batter, and deep-frying until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beignets De Panais

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender, then cut them into long, narrow strips.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the parsnip strips in the batter.

  2. Heat oil in a deep pot until boiling.

  3. Fry the parsnip strips in batches until puffed and golden-brown.

  4. Remove with a skimmer and drain on brown paper.

  5. Serve in a pyramid on cut paper or 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. Parsnip + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Provide the main body and sweet flavour of the beignets once cooked and tender.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter structure that coats the strips and sets into a crisp, golden shell.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites help it puff and lighten during frying.
Water
Thins the flour and egg mixture into a batter that coats the parsnip strips evenly.

The step that matters

Frying in batches at a steady boil. Adding too many strips at once drops the oil temperature, so the batter soaks up oil instead of crisping. Frying in small batches keeps the oil hot enough to puff and brown the coating quickly.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, pepper, nutmeg. 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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