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Dessert

Beignets De Fraises

Strawberry beignets are fried dough fritters studded with strawberries and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Beignets De Fraises

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the oil, lemon peel, and flour together.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks and add enough white wine to achieve a very thick cream consistency.

  3. At the last moment, fold in the egg whites beaten to stiff peaks.

  4. Remove the stems from large strawberries and drop them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a kettle to at least 2 inches deep until boiling.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the boiling lard, allowing 1 strawberry per fritter.

  3. Fry until golden brown.

  4. Remove with a skimmer to brown paper and sift sugar over them.

  5. 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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, while whipped whites give it lightness and a airy rise.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the fritter together as it fries.
White wine
Thins the batter to a thick cream and adds moisture and a light acidity.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter tender and moist.
Large strawberries
Provide the fruit filling that softens and flavours each fritter as it fries.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites at the last moment. Beaten whites trap air that gives lift. If they are folded in early or overmixed, the foam collapses and the fritters turn out dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, white wine, 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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