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A Variation on Belle Fritters

A variation of Belle fritters made with a batter of water, butter, flour, eggs, and filled with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Variation on Belle Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the choux dough

  1. Boil water and butter together in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour and cook until it leaves the sides of the pan.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until smooth.

Fry or bake the fritters

  1. Drop small pieces into hot lard with a teaspoon.

  2. Fry the pieces until golden.

  3. Optionally, use a star‑shaped funnel to create ring shapes in the lard.

  4. Fill greased muffin pans halfway with batter for vanilla puffs.

  5. Bake the puffs at 400 °F (200 °C) until done.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. Boil milk and sugar for custard.

  2. Thicken the custard with flour and one egg.

  3. Let both puffs and custard cool.

  4. Open the puffs and fill them with custard.

  5. Sprinkle the rings with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

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

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and give the batter structure as they set during frying or baking.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch that thickens the dough and the custard, giving body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the choux dough.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding creaminess and soft texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the pieces until golden. Oil or lard must be hot enough for the dough to puff and brown quickly; if it is too cool, the fritters soak up fat, turn greasy and cook through unevenly.

“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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