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Wheat Fritters

Stiff batter of eggs, milk, baking powder, salt, and flour fried in hot lard like doughnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Wheat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix three eggs, one and a half cups of milk, three teaspoonfuls of baking powder, salt, and flour until stiff and thicker than batter cakes.

  2. Drop the batter into hot lard and fry until golden, like doughnuts.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine one cup of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of butter, one teaspoonful of flour, and half a cup of boiling water; flavor with lemon extract and boil until clear.

  2. Serve the fritters with the clear sauce or maple syrup if desired.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

833Calories
27 gProtein
26 gFat
120 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

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

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 as they set during frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and lighten.
Flour
Forms the starch and protein network that gives the batter its body.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a workable thickness.
Sugar
Sweetens the fritters and, when boiled, thickens the sauce into a clear syrup.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into hot lard and fry until golden. Hot fat sets the outside of the batter quickly, so the fritter browns and forms a crust instead of soaking up grease. If the lard is too cool, the fritters absorb more fat and turn heavy.

“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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