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Dessert

Beignet Souffle

A sweet, puffed pastry made from milk, flour, eggs, and butter, fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beignet Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, salt, butter, sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in flour mixed with a little cold milk to form a thick paste.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the lightly beaten yolks and whites of the eggs.

Rest and fry

  1. Let the mixture stand for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Drop walnut-sized pieces into hot lard and fry until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve dusted with powdered sugar and sliced lemon.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms a thick paste that sets into a tender, light structure when fried.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the batter, supporting its structure as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and softens the texture of the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown to a golden colour when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is too cool, the pieces absorb excess fat and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives a golden, cooked result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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