Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Fritters

A batter of milk, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, currants, spices, fried in lard and served hot with wine and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Mix in the butter and let it cool.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and prepared flour.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and the currants dredged with flour. Ensure the batter is thick.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Drain and serve hot with a mixture of wine and powdered sugar.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the batter, absorbing the hot milk to create a soft, cohesive base.
Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks add lightness and bind the batter so the fritters hold together.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the batter.
Currants
Provide bursts of fruity sweetness and chewy texture throughout the fritters.
Prepared flour
Helps thicken the batter and gives the fritters structure while frying.

The step that matters

Ensure the batter is thick. A thin batter spreads and absorbs excess hot fat instead of forming compact fritters. Stiff egg whites must be folded gently so they keep their air and the batter holds its shape in the hot lard.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes