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Dessert

Fritters Souffles À LA Vanille

A light, vanilla-flavored fritter made with milk, butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fritters Souffles À LA Vanille

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Infuse the vanilla bean in boiling milk and reduce to half.

  2. Remove the vanilla bean and add butter; bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in flour briskly to form a stiff paste that doesn't stick to the pan.

  4. Transfer to another bowl and mix in powdered sugar, egg yolks, and salt.

  5. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks and fold in with whipped cream.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the mixture on a floured surface and cut into walnut-sized pieces.

  2. Drop pieces into very hot fat and fry for 3 minutes until golden.

Serve

  1. Arrange on a napkin and dust with powdered sugar 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.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Carries the vanilla flavour and forms the base of the paste.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the paste and softens its texture.
Flour
Cooks with the hot liquid into a stiff paste that gives the fritters their structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it lightens the mixture and helps it puff in the fat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. The flour must be stirred briskly into the boiling milk and butter so the starch cooks and forms a stiff paste. If the mixture is under-cooked or too wet, the pieces will spread and stick in the fat.

“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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