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Dessert

Fruit Fritters

Plantain fritters soaked in liqueur, battered, fried, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Fruit Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plantain

  1. Cut the plantain into neat pieces.

  2. Soak the plantain pieces in liqueur or brandy with sugar for an afternoon.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and water to create a batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan until hot.

  2. Dip the soaked plantain pieces in the batter and fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels and dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Brandy + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,181 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Plantain
Provides the main body and sweet, starchy flavour of each fritter.
Liqueur or brandy
Soaks into the plantain, adding aroma and depth of flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the plantain and helps the surface brown during frying.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter that coats the plantain and crisps when fried.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to seal the batter quickly. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp, and the plantain inside may not cook through.

“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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