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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a thick batter and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples, then soak them in a mixture of powdered sugar, lemon juice, and brandy.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, eggs, salt, and enough milk to create a thick batter.

  2. Dip the soaked apple slices into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the salad oil in a pan and fry the battered apples until golden brown.

  2. Dust the fried fritters 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. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Apples
Provide the fruit filling that becomes tender and sweet inside the fried coating.
All-purpose flour
Forms the thick batter that coats the apples and sets into a crisp, golden shell when fried.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firmly around the apple slices while frying.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the apples during soaking and gives the finished fritters a sweet dusting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the apples and helps keep their color fresh.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the apples during soaking.

The step that matters

Frying the battered apples. The oil must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly. If the oil is too cool, the batter absorbs excess oil and turns greasy, while the apple inside may not cook through before the outside overbrowns.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, brandy, flour, egg, milk. 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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