Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Apple Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, make a smooth batter by mixing the flour, eggs, sweet milk, and salt.
Peel, core, and slice the apples.
Add the apple slices to the batter.
Fry and serve
In a pan, heat equal parts lard and butter until boiling hot.
Using a ladle, scoop up the batter with a slice of apple and drop it into the hot lard.
Fry until golden brown, then drain briefly.
Serve warm, dusted with powdered sugar and nutmeg.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + appletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,104 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,790 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Flour and butter 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the batter's structure as it sets around the apple slices when fried.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and help it set and hold together while frying.
- Sweet milk
- Thins the batter to a smooth coating consistency and adds moisture.
- Apples
- Provide the main fruit filling, becoming tender and juicy inside the crisp batter.
- Lard and butter
- Hot frying fat that browns the batter's surface and adds richness.
The step that matters
Frying in very hot fat. If the lard and butter are not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping and browning quickly. Fritters fried in properly hot fat set on the outside before the apple inside overcooks.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, milk, butter, sugar, nutmeg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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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