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Golden-ball Fritters

A fried dough fritter made with water, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Golden-ball Fritters

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Golden-ball Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine 1 pint of water, ½ cup of butter, and 1 tablespoon of sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of sifted flour, mixing briskly until well combined.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Beat in 6 eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the stiff dough into boiling lard.

  2. Stir the lard to create a whirlpool effect, which helps the fritters form into round balls.

  3. Serve with syrup or melted sugar and butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it set when fried.
Eggs
Add moisture and richness and help the dough puff and bind as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough, giving a tender interior.
Water
Turns the butter and sugar into a hot liquid that cooks the flour into a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Stirring the lard after dropping in the dough. The dough must sit in hot lard long enough to set its outside. Stirring the lard creates a whirlpool that turns the spoonfuls into round balls and keeps them from sticking together or to the pan.

“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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