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Queen Fritters

A batter of water, butter, flour, and eggs is boiled, stirred, cooled, beaten, and fried into fritters.

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 ↓

Queen Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil the water and butter together in a large saucepan.

  2. Add the flour all at once and stir over the heat until you have a firm, well-cooked paste.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Work in the eggs one at a time, beating the mixture well against the side of the saucepan.

Fry and glaze

  1. Fry the fritters as you would the other varieties.

  2. Optionally, glaze by sifting powdered sugar on top and melting it in a hot oven or with a red-hot salamander.

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
Starch that cooks into a firm paste to give the fritters their structure.
Eggs
Add moisture and set during cooking to bind and lighten the choux-style paste.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the paste and carrying flavour.
Water
Turns the flour into a paste and creates the steam that helps the fritters puff.

The step that matters

Work in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one be fully absorbed, giving a smooth, pliable paste. Adding them all at once can split the mixture, and the fritters may not rise or hold their shape.

“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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