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Dessert

Spanish Fritters

A fried dough ball made with flour, egg, yeast, milk, butter, and lard, served with wine and sugar or molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spanish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, beaten egg, yeast, and enough milk to create a dough slightly softer than muffin dough.

  2. Mix the dough early in the morning and let it rise until well risen.

  3. Once risen, work in the melted butter.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the dough into balls the size of walnuts.

  2. Fry the balls in boiling lard until they are light brown.

  3. Serve with wine and sugar or molasses.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main structure of the dough that holds the fritters together.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the fritters.
Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, making the dough light and airy.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and enriches its flavor.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy before the centers cook through.

“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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