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Virginia Belle Fritters

A batter of butter, milk, flour, and eggs is fried in lard to make fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 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 ↓

Virginia Belle Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Put a piece of butter the size of an egg into a pint of milk.

  2. Thicken when it comes to a boil with a pint of flour; stir it on the fire until the flour is cooked.

  3. Pour into a wooden bowl, add 5 eggs, one at a time, beating each one well in.

Fry and serve

  1. Put a pint of lard in a pan and when it boils drop one fritter in at a time from the point of your spoon.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

444Calories
14 gProtein
38 gFat
13 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78

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

By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour (in the method)
Cooked on the fire, it thickens the milk into a stiff base that holds the batter together.
Eggs
Beaten in one at a time, they bind the batter and give the fritters structure and lift.
Lard
Heated until it boils, it fries the fritters quickly and gives them a crisp outside.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the batter.
Butter
Melted into the hot milk, it adds richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the milk. If the flour is not cooked fully on the heat, the batter tastes raw and pasty. Stirring it over the fire until it thickens and pulls from the pan gelatinizes the starch so the batter sets properly when fried.

“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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