[Sca-cooks] beignet

[johnna holloway]

OED gives it as:
beignet benye. Cookery. [Fr. ] A fritter.
     1835 Irving Tour Prairies xxxiii.
 306 We..supped heartily upon stewed buffalo
 meat,..beignets, or fritters of flour fried
     in bear's lard.

Which seems to indicate a rather late 19th
century origin. John Mariani gives it as
1835 too.

However, beignet is also mentioned in this
even more interesting entry under FART--

 A ball of light pastry, a `puff'.
 Obs. Cf. F. pet `beignet en boule.'
 1552 Huloet, Fartes of Portingale, or other
 like swete conceites, collybia.

It's even within the period...

Under Bun... it's listed within the entry--

bun bn, sb.2 Forms: 4-7 bunne, 5 bonn(e, 8-9 bunn, 5- bun.
[Etymology doubtful. The mod. provincial Fr. bugne is said by
Burguy and by Boiste (1840), to be used at Lyons for a sort
of fritter; the word is not recorded in OFr. with this sense, but
bugne, beugne (= mod. bigne) occurs with the sense of
`swelling produced by a blow'; the dim. bugnete is found in OFr. with
the sense of `fritter', and bugnets given by Cotgr. (1611)
as a synonym of bignets (now beignets), explained by him as `little
round loaves, or lumpes made of fine meale, oyle or butter,
 and reasons; bunnes, Lenten loaves'. (Cf. Sp. bunuelo bun,
fritter.) It is conjectured that OFr. bugne, originally
`swelling' may have had the unrecorded sense of `puffed loaf' (=
bugnet),
and may have been adopted into English as bun.
But the existence of this sense in OFr. is at present
hypothetical, and it is questionable whether such
 a derivation would account for the form of the Eng. word. ]

I checked FRITTER but the associations are all old French.
I don't know where the Celtic comes in.

Johnnae llyn Lewis  Johnna Holloway


Olwen the Odd wrote:>
> >         beignet
> >         SYLLABICATION: bei·gnet
> >         VARIANT FORMS: also bei·gné
> >         NOUN: (Southern Louisiana) 1. A square doughnut with no
> >hole: "a New
> >Orleans coffeehouse selling beignets, an insidious Louisianian
> >cousin of the
> >doughnut that exists to get powdered sugar on your face" (Los
> >Angeles
> >Times). 2. A fritter.
> >         ETYMOLOGY: French, fritter, of Celtic origin>
> So are there any Celtic scholars who can share what the original root
> that later became beignets?>
> This is a topic of discussion on the Merry Rose.  I too was interested as I
> cann't figure out the connection between the french and the celts busides
> kissing cousins.> Olwen