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Dessert

Cream Fritters

A fried batter of egg whites, cream, flour, nutmeg, and salt, served with jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour 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 ↓

Cream Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir the egg whites into the cream.

  2. Add flour, nutmeg, and salt; beat the mixture hard for two minutes until thick.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat plenty of sweet lard in a pan.

  2. Drop a spoonful of batter for each fritter into the hot lard and fry until golden.

  3. Drain the fritters and serve on a hot, clean napkin with jelly sauce.

  4. Pull them open gently instead of cutting.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Whites of eggs
Whisked into the batter to add structure and lightness as the fritters set.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the batter a tender interior.
Flour
Provides the starch that thickens the batter and sets its structure when fried.
Sweet lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the outside and crisping the surface.

The step that matters

Beating the batter until thick. Beating incorporates air and develops the flour's structure, so the batter holds its shape and the fritters puff rather than spread or turn dense.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, flour, sauce):

  1. Jalapenofits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, sauce. 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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