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Dessert

Beignets De Pomme De Terre

A French potato fritter made with mashed potatoes, flour, eggs, cream, wine, and spices, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beignets De Pomme De Terre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until well done, then drain and mash thoroughly.

  2. While still warm, mix in the cream, wine, eggs, yolks, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  3. Set the bowl in ice water and beat the mixture for 15 minutes until light.

  4. Gently fold in the flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry small spoonfuls of the mixture in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the fritter mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness through extra fat and emulsifiers.
Flour
Gives the batter enough structure to hold its shape in frying.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture.

The step that matters

Beating over ice water. Beating the mixture while it is chilled keeps it light and airy, since warm batter loses trapped air and becomes dense. Folding the flour in gently avoids developing gluten, which would toughen the fritters.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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