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Dessert

Lemon Fritteks

Fried lemon cakes served with a lemon glaze made from lemon juice, zest, sugar, wine, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Fritteks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat up the whipped and strained yolks of five eggs with one-half a cup of powdered sugar.

  2. Add the grated peel of half a lemon, one teaspoon of mingled nutmeg and cinnamon, a little salt, and one-half a cup of cream.

  3. Add the whites of the eggs, and then two heaping cups of prepared flour; work all together quickly and lightly into a soft paste, just stiff enough to roll out.

  4. Pass the rolling-pin over the paste until it be about three-quarters of an inch thick.

Fry and drain

  1. Cut into small circular cakes with a tumbler or cake-cutter, and fry in hot lard. They ought to puff up like crullers.

  2. Drain on clean hot paper.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make the sauce by mixing the juice of two lemons and the grated peel of one, one cup of powdered sugar, one glass of wine, and the whites of two eggs beaten stiff.

  2. Serve the warm cakes with the sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

688Calories
20 gProtein
13 gFat
116 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the paste and whites, beaten stiff, lighten the batter and sauce.
Prepared flour
Gives the paste its structure so it holds shape when rolled and fried.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cakes and the sauce, and dissolves easily into the liquid parts.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the soft paste.
Lemons
Peel adds aroma to the cakes; juice gives acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in hot lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly, so the cakes puff and brown rather than soaking up grease and turning heavy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, sugar, cream, egg, flour, wine, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, sugar, cream, egg, flour, wine, cinnamon. 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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