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Balloon Fritters

A fried batter made with water, butter, flour, and eggs, cooked in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Balloon Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil 1 pint of water with 2 teaspoons of fresh butter.

  2. Pour the boiling water over 1 light pint of flour and beat until cold.

  3. Add the well-beaten yolks of 6 eggs.

  4. Just before cooking, fold in the perfectly beaten egg whites.

Fry

  1. Fill a skillet with lard and heat until boiling.

  2. Drop in the batter by the tablespoon.

  3. Cook for a few minutes until golden.

Drain and serve

  1. Place them in a warm oven on a dry towel to remove excess grease.

  2. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the starchy structure that holds the batter together and sets when cooked.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while beaten whites trap air that lifts the fritters.
Water
Boiling water turns to steam in the hot fat, helping the batter puff and stay light.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the batter a tender texture and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites just before cooking. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that expand in the hot fat and lighten the fritters. If the batter stands, the foam deflates and the fritters turn out dense.

“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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