Skip to main content
Dessert

Victoria Fritters

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Victoria Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil 1 pint of water and add 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of flour for 4 to 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and beat in 4 eggs, one at a time, beating a few minutes between each addition.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture in plenty of hot lard.

  2. Test if they are ready by checking if they are hollow in the center.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 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
Forms the starch base that sets into a sturdy, hollow-centred dough when cooked.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the fritters puff and bind as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one fully blend into the hot dough, giving a smooth, pourable batter. Adding them all at once can cause lumps or a dough that is too loose or too stiff to puff properly.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes