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Dessert

Apple Pancakes or Fritters

A fried apple dessert made with a thin batter of flour, egg yolks, and butter, served dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Pancakes or Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the apples

  1. Combine apple slices with brandy, white wine, grated nutmeg, and powdered sugar.

  2. Let the mixture sit for a few hours.

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add egg yolks and melted butter.

  3. Gradually add water to create a thin batter.

  4. Drain apples.

  5. Fold apples into batter, using one large spoonful of batter for each slice.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat hot fat in a frying pan.

  2. Fry fritters quickly until golden brown.

  3. Drain fritters on a sieve.

  4. Place fritters in a warm dish.

  5. Sift powdered sugar over them as you layer them.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

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

  5. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter's structure, which coats the apple slices and sets when fried.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter, adding richness, colour and tenderness to the coating.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender texture in the batter.
Apples
Provide the main fruit, whose juices soften slightly after soaking and sweeten the fritters.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavour to the apples during their soak.

The step that matters

Fry fritters quickly until golden brown. Hot fat sets the thin batter on contact, forming a crisp coating. If the fat is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy, while overcooking dries the apple inside.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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