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Plain Egg Fritters

A batter of beaten eggs, milk, salt, and flour fried in lard, served with syrup or jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Egg Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light.

  2. Add milk and salt, then mix in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop tablespoons of the batter into hot deep lard, frying until golden.

  2. Serve hot with syrup or jelly.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 batter, while whipped whites add lightness and help the fritters puff.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape and set into a fritter when fried.
Milk
Loosens the batter and adds moisture so the fritters stay tender inside.
Deep lard
Conducts heat around the batter, cooking the fritters quickly and browning their outsides.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten stiff. Overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the fritters turn dense instead of light.

“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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