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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are small fried batter pieces containing tart apple, made with sour milk, salt, baking soda, flour, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add chopped tart apple.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, helping the fritters rise.
Flour
Provides structure, so the stiff batter holds its shape while frying.
Tart apple
Adds moisture and a tart flavor that balances the sweetness of the browned exterior.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Heat the lard before dropping in the batter. The lard must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs fat and becomes greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour. 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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