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Dessert

Delicious Fritters

A batter of flour, eggs, and butter fried in lard, optionally with apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Delicious Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil water and butter for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in enough flour to thicken to the consistency of mashed potatoes.

  3. Pour into a bowl and beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. Add a little salt and nutmeg.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. For apple fritters, add chopped ripe apples to the mixture before frying.

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. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the frying fat.
Flour
Thickens the boiled water and butter into a dough that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the boiled base, softening the texture.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one blend fully into the thick dough, giving a smooth, evenly bound batter. Adding them all at once can cause lumps and a dough that does not hold together well.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, potato, nutmeg, buttermilk):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, potato, nutmeg, buttermilk. 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.

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