Skip to main content
Main

Wheat Fritters

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt is fried in lard to make golden fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wheat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and mix in the milk.

  2. Add the baking powder and salt.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour until the batter is thick.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard in a deep pan until hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the hot fat.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a workable consistency.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters puff and lighten as they fry.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, which sets into the fritter's structure when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Too hot, and the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes