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Dessert

Apple Fritters I

Apple fritters are fried apple rings coated in a batter of flour, egg, water, butter, and salt, sprinkled with sugar.

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

Apple Fritters I

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the yolk of the egg, add butter or oil, and gradually mix in the lukewarm water.

  2. Just before using, beat the egg white with a pinch of salt until stiff and fold it into the batter.

Prepare and fry

  1. Peel the apples, remove the cores, and cut them into rings about ½ inch thick.

  2. Dip the apple rings into the batter and fry in deep hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with castor 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the structure of the batter that coats and crisps around the apple.
Egg
The yolk enriches the batter and the whipped white lightens it for a airy texture.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens inside while the coating fries crisp.
Butter or salad oil
Adds fat that tenderises the batter and helps it brown when fried.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that makes the batter light. Beating too early lets the foam collapse, so it should be folded in just before frying.

Swap the apple

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

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

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