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Dessert

Currant Fritters

Fried batter containing currants, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, egg whites, and milk.

  2. Add the fine bread crumbs, nutmeg, currants, melted butter, and salt.

  3. Stir in enough flour to achieve a moderate thickness.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat oil in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of the mixture to fry until golden brown.

  2. Remove and drain on paper towels.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness as they set during frying.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the fritters body.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity flavour through the fritters.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the fritters brown.
Flour
Thickens the batter to a moderate consistency so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls. The oil must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly on contact. If the oil is too cool, the fritters absorb grease and turn heavy and soggy rather than crisp and golden.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, bread, nutmeg, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, nutmeg, butter, flour. 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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