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Dessert

Beignets De Peches

A French dessert of peach fritters coated in batter and fried, served dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beignets De Peches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel, stone, and halve the peaches.

  2. Sprinkle the peaches with grated lemon peel, sugar, and rum.

  3. Cover and set aside for 2 to 3 hours, then drain.

Make the batter

  1. Make a batter for fruit fritters using the liquor from the peaches.

  2. Add beaten egg whites to the batter until stiff.

  3. Ensure the batter is thick enough to coat the fruit thoroughly.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep lard in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Dip each peach piece into the batter and drop into the boiling lard.

  3. Fry until golden‑brown, then remove with a skimmer to drain on brown paper.

  4. Sift powdered sugar over the fritters and serve in a pyramid on cut paper.

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. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Peach + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together339 recipes

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

  3. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Peaches
Provide the fruit that is coated in batter and fried, giving the dish its main flavor.
Egg whites (in the method)
Beaten until stiff, they lighten the batter so it puffs and stays airy while frying.
Brandy or rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the peaches and the batter made from their liquor.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and draws out their juices during the resting time.
Deep lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the batter to a golden crust and adding richness.

The step that matters

Make the batter thick enough. A batter that is too thin will slide off the peach pieces instead of coating them, leaving bare fruit that cooks unevenly and browns poorly in the hot fat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, brandy, sugar. 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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