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Bread

Coffee Fritters

Coffee fritters are slices of stale bread soaked in coffee, coated with egg and sugar, then fried until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Coffee Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut stale bread into thick slices.

  2. Soak the slices in strong coffee.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the yolks of 1-2 eggs with a little sugar and a few drops of coffee.

  2. Brush the soaked bread slices with the egg mixture.

  3. Fry in hot oil or butter until crisp and golden-brown.

Serve

  1. Drain well and serve immediately, sprinkled with sugar.

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.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its dry, porous crumb soaks up coffee and holds its shape during frying.
Strong freshly made coffee
Flavours the bread and gives the fritters their characteristic coffee aroma.
Eggs
Egg yolk coats the bread, adding richness and helping it brown and crisp when fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface caramelise and brown in the hot fat.
Oil or butter
Hot fat conducts heat quickly, crisping the outside while the inside stays soft.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil or butter. If the fat is not hot enough, the bread absorbs oil and becomes greasy instead of crisp. Hot fat sets the egg coating quickly and browns the surface, so the fritters stay crisp inside and out.

“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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