Skip to main content
Dessert

French Fritters

A sweet fried bread dish served with a lemon‑flavored powdered‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
French Fritters

Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

French Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Add the milk to the yolks.

  3. Cut the crusts off the bread and soak the slices in the milk for 15 minutes.

Fry

  1. Heat the griddle and fry the soaked bread slices in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until light and fluffy.

  2. Stir in the powdered sugar and lemon flavoring to make the sauce.

  3. Serve the fritters with the lemon 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the milk soak and help the bread hold a custard-like coating.
Milk
Moistens the bread and softens its interior as it soaks.
Baker's bread
Thick slices absorb the egg-milk mixture and form the body of each fritter.
Lard
Hot fat browns the outside of the soaked bread, producing a golden crust.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness to the sauce and dissolves smoothly into it.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the soaked bread absorbs fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, bread, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes