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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a batter of eggs, milk, and flour, served hot with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 395 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the apples, cut them into sliced pieces, and remove the cores with a cutter.

  2. For enhanced flavor, soak the apple slices in a mixture of sherry and sugar for 2-3 hours before battering.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, make a batter by mixing the eggs, milk, and flour.

  2. Dip the apple slices into the batter.

  3. Fry the battered slices in boiling lard or dripping until golden.

  4. Drain on a hot dish lined with blotting paper, placing each piece separately.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot, dusted with powdered sugar.

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 + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and hold its shape when fried.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, so it coats the apple and sets as it fries.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, loosening it for an even coating.
Apples
Provide the main filling, softening inside the batter while the outside browns.

The step that matters

Frying the battered slices in boiling lard or dripping. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly and brown it before the apple turns greasy or soft. Oil that is too cool lets the batter soak up fat and become heavy.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, sugar, sherry):

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

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