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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are apple slices coated in batter and fried, then sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core, pare, and slice the apples into ⅓‑inch thick slices, keeping the center intact.

  2. Sprinkle the apple slices with sugar, lemon juice, and spice.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, milk, salt, and flour to create a batter.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the apple slices in the batter and fry them in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fritters on paper towels and sprinkle with soft sugar before serving.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it puff.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, which sets around the apple as it fries.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs into a batter that coats the apple slices.
Apples
Provide the main filling, softening slightly as they cook inside the batter.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the batter's outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites gently into the batter. Beaten whites trap air that gives the batter lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving dense fritters instead of light, puffy ones.

Swap the apple

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

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

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