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Dessert

Beignets De Panais

Beignets de Panais are battered parsnip strips fried until puffed and golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and parsnip 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 batter

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

  2. Mix the flour, egg yolks, salt, pepper, nutmeg, salad oil, and water to form a batter.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until the batter is stiff enough to hold its shape.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the parsnip strips into the batter.

  2. Heat the lard until boiling, then drop in a few battered parsnips at a time.

  3. Fry until puffed and golden-brown, then remove with a skimmer and drain on brown paper.

  4. 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. Nutmeg + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + parsniptop 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. Pepper + parsniptop 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure as it sets around the parsnips when fried.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the batter bind and brown during frying.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that makes the batter light and puffy.
Parsnips
The main filling, cooked until tender before being battered and fried.
Water
Hydrates the flour to form a batter that coats the parsnip strips.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring them in hard deflates the batter, so the beignets fry up flat and dense instead of puffed.

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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