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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are battered apple slices fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core, peel, and slice the apples into ½ inch slices.

  2. Sprinkle the apple slices with powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Let them stand for one hour.

Make and fry the fritters

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, milk, and egg to create a batter.

  2. Dip the apple slices into the batter.

  3. Fry the battered apple slices in deep fat until golden brown.

  4. Serve with hard 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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Sour apples
Provide the fruit base and tartness that balances the sweet coating.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter structure that crisps and holds the coating around the apple.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter, helping it bind to the fruit.
Baking powder
Releases gas during frying, making the batter light and puffed.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, loosening it into a coating that browns evenly.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the apples and draws out some juice as they stand.

The step that matters

Frying the battered apple slices in deep fat. The oil must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly. If the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs excess fat and turns greasy before it crisps, and the apple inside can overcook.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, flour, milk, egg. 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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