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French Fritters

A batter of milk, flour, eggs, and salt fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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French Fritters

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil half of the milk in a pot.

  2. Mix the other half of the milk with the flour to thicken the boiling milk.

  3. While cooking, beat the eggs until very light.

  4. Add the eggs to the batter one spoonful at a time, mixing well.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat lard in a small oven until boiling hot.

  2. Drop not quite a spoonful of batter for each fritter into the hot lard.

  3. Remove the fritters before they turn dark and drain them in a colander.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Milk
Provides the liquid base and dairy richness for the batter.
Flour
Its starch thickens the boiling milk, giving the batter body and structure.
Eggs
Beaten eggs add air and lightness, and their proteins set as the fritters cook.
Lard
Hot fat carries heat into each fritter, cooking it through and browning its surface.

The step that matters

Remove the fritters before they turn dark. Fritters keep cooking from residual heat after they leave the fat. Waiting for dark color lets the surface overbrown and taste bitter, while the interior may stay underset.

“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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