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Dessert

A French Fritter Batter

A batter for making French fritters, made with flour, egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, water, egg whites, fruit, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A French Fritter Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, egg yolks, olive oil, and lemon juice.

  2. Stir well, adding water until the mixture has the thickness of ordinary batter.

  3. You can use the batter immediately or refrigerate it for up to a day.

Add the fruit and fry

  1. Before cooking, fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gently mix in the fruit pieces.

  3. Fry the batter until golden brown, then sprinkle sugar over the tops.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter for a smooth, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help it puff when fried.
Olive oil
Adds fat that gives the batter tenderness and moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites trap air that makes the fritters light; if they are deflated or overmixed, the batter turns dense and heavy when fried.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, olive, 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.

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