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Dessert

Japanese Fritters

A batter of milk, butter, flour, and eggs is fried and served with powdered sugar or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Japanese Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk and butter together.

  2. Add the flour and stir until you have a thick paste.

  3. Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time, mixing and beating each in before adding the next.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop the mixture by teaspoonfuls into hot fat.

  2. Serve with powdered sugar or sauce.

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 + 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. Flour + sugartop 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

Flour
Forms the thick paste that gives the fritters their body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the paste and add structure and richness as they set in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the milk base, giving a softer, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour into a paste.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully beaten in before the next so the paste stays smooth and emulsified. Adding them too fast can cause lumps or a split batter, and the fritters may not hold their shape when dropped into the fat.

“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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