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Dessert

Beignets Au Blanc

A French pastry made of a rice flour batter, flavored with lemon peel and orange flower water, fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Beignets Au Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix rice flour with milk and simmer slowly, stirring constantly.

  2. Add cream, sugar, grated lemon peel, and orange flower water.

  3. Once thickened, let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into walnut-sized balls.

  2. Dip the balls into batter and fry them in hot oil.

Serve

  1. Once fried, sift powdered sugar over the beignets 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when simmered, giving the mixture body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice flour thickens into a soft, custardy mixture.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried outside take on golden browning.

The step that matters

Thicken and cool the mixture fully before shaping. Rice flour thickens only when its starch has been heated long enough in the liquid. If the mixture is still loose, the balls will not hold their shape, and if it is still hot, it will be too soft to form cleanly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, milk, cream, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, milk, cream, sugar, lemon. 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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