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Dessert

Queen Fritters

A fried batter made with water, butter, flour, eggs, and fried in Cottolene or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Queen Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux paste

  1. Boil ½ pint of water and 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 4 ounces of flour when boiling and stir rapidly until it forms a ball.

  3. Remove from heat, beat hard, and let cool.

Add the eggs

  1. Add 1 unbeaten egg and beat until well combined.

  2. Add another egg and beat again; repeat until all 4 eggs are added.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a kettle of Cottolene or lard.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot fat and fry until golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 starch structure that holds the paste together as it cooks.
Eggs
Add moisture and set during frying, giving the fritters their structure and lift.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the boiled water base, tenderising the paste.
Cottolene or lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully incorporated before the next is added. Eggs that are added too quickly can break the paste, leaving it loose and greasy, while well-blended paste holds its shape and puffs in hot 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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