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Dessert

Beignet Souffle

A puff pastry-like beignet made by cooking milk, sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and vanilla, then frying small pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Beignet Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk or water, sugar, butter, and flavoring; bring to a boil.

  2. Add flour while stirring continuously until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the pan, about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in eggs one at a time.

  4. Sift in sugar until the mixture is as stiff as puff pastry.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop small pieces of the mixture into hot fat and fry until golden.

  2. Drain and serve on a napkin with sifted sugar on top.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Eggs
Give structure, and their moisture turns to steam that lifts the pastry as it fries.
Milk
Supplies moisture that turns to steam in the hot fat, helping the pastry puff.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the finished pastry.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one fully blend into the hot mixture, forming a smooth, stable dough. Adding them all at once can cause lumps or a dough that does not hold together well.

“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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