Name: Pine Strawberry Fritters
Ingredients: 3 ounces flour; a little white wine; a little brandy; grated lemon peel; 4 egg whites; 2 egg yolks; boiling lard for frying; sugar for dusting

Why it works: White wine and brandy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 620 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pine Strawberry Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make a batter with flour, white wine, brandy, grated lemon peel, beaten egg whites, and egg yolks.
Dip the fruit into the batter separately.
Fry the dipped fruit in boiling lard until light in color.
Drain the fritters on a sieve.
Place them on a dish, sift sugar over them, and glaze with a 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.

White wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together620 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, white wine, brandy, egg, sugar):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, white wine, brandy, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.