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Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are pieces of bread soaked in wine and egg, fried in lard, and glazed with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into convenient sizes.

  2. Pour white wine over the bread and let it stand for a few minutes.

  3. Drain the bread on a sieve.

Make the egg batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add 4 tablespoons of white wine to the eggs and mix well.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat lard in a pan until boiling.

  2. Dip the bread in the egg mixture and fry until light brown.

  3. Sprinkle sugar on each fritter and glaze them.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the fritter and soaks up the wine and egg coating.
Eggs
Bind the coating and set when fried, giving a golden structure.
White wine
Softens the bread and adds moisture and a light acidity to the batter.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the crust browning and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a glazed finish on the cooked fritters.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until light brown. The lard must be hot enough to set the egg coating quickly; if it is too cool, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy instead of crisp and golden.

“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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