Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Fritteks

A sweet, lemon-flavored fried dough served with a lemon-sugar wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Fritteks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Add grated lemon peel, nutmeg and cinnamon mixture, salt, and cream. Mix well.

  3. Fold in the egg whites.

  4. Gradually add flour to form a soft paste.

  5. Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick and cut into small circles.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the circles in hot lard until they puff up like crullers.

  2. Drain on clean paper.

  3. Mix lemon juice, grated lemon peel, powdered sugar, wine, and beaten egg whites to make the sauce.

  4. Serve warm with the 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks add richness and the whites, folded in, lighten the dough and help it puff.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the soft paste its body and holds the fritters together.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves smoothly into the yolks for a silky base.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the dough tender and rich.
Lard
Frying fat that browns the outside and gives the fritters their crisp, rich surface.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until they puff. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of puffing and browning quickly. Frying at a steady high heat sets the outside fast so the inside stays light.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, flour, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, flour, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes