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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried batter-coated apple slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine hot water, sugar, butter, flour, lemon juice or sherry, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Make a batter with flour, salt, sweet milk, and beaten egg whites.

  3. Stir sliced apples into the batter.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan and drop in spoonfuls of the batter with apples.

  2. 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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, making the batter light and airy as it cooks.
Flour
Its proteins and starch set when fried, giving the batter structure around the apples.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside turn golden brown as it fries.
Apples
Provide the main fruit flavor and moisture inside each fritter.
Lard
Transfers heat quickly to the batter, crisping the outside and browning it.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls of batter. The lard must be hot enough to set the batter quickly. If it is too cool, the fritters soak up grease and turn heavy and greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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