Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Milk Gems

Milk-based fritters made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, and salt, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Sterrett, Laura C · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Sweet Milk Gems

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat one egg well.

  2. Add a pint of new milk.

  3. Add a little salt.

  4. Add Graham flour until the batter will drop off the spoon nicely.

  5. Use two eggs, one half pint milk, one teaspoon salt, and two cups flour.

  6. Make fritters quickly and beat thoroughly.

Bake in gem-pans

  1. Heat and butter the gem-pans.

  2. Drop the dough into the pans.

  3. Bake in a hot oven for twenty minutes.

Fry the fritters

  1. Heat lard until nice and sweet and boiling hot.

  2. Test the heat by dropping a teaspoon of batter; if it rises quickly in a light ball with a splutter and soon browns, the heat is right.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of batter into boiling lard.

  4. When the fritters are done, take them up carefully with a wire spoon.

  5. Drain them in a hot colander.

  6. Sift powdered sugar over them.

  7. Serve hot.

Make the apple batter

  1. Beat three eggs very light.

  2. Add one quart of milk.

  3. Make a thin batter.

  4. Add a little salt and grated rind of one lemon.

  5. Pare, core and slice thin one quart nice tart apples.

  6. Make a batter with one cup sweet milk to two cups flour, a heaping teaspoon baking powder, two eggs beaten separately, one tablespoon sugar, and a teaspoon salt.

  7. Heat the milk a little more than milk-warm.

  8. Add slowly to the beaten yolks and sugar.

  9. Add flour and whites of eggs.

  10. Stir all together.

  11. Throw in thin slices of good sour apples, clipping the batter up over them.

  12. Drop in boiling lard in large spoonfuls with a piece of apple in each.

  13. Fry to a light brown.

  14. Serve with maple syrup or a nice syrup made of sugar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

838Calories
28 gProtein
15 gFat
149 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Apple1 medium (182g)95
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
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 Sterrett, Laura C. 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its body.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the fritters their structure.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that contrast with the rich batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Test the heat of the lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. A test spoonful that rises quickly and browns soon shows the right heat.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More milk fritters recipes

Sour 3 See all 11 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes