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Dessert

Cream Fritters

A sweet fried dessert made from a milk and sugar custard thickened with cornstarch, flavored with lemon or vanilla, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar and thicken with cornstarch.

  3. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  4. Pour the mixture into a flat square dish and let it cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut into squares.

  2. Dip each square in egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  4. Serve with apple jelly or wine sauce.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard that sets once cooled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the custard its body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk so the mixture firms up as it cools.
Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the square so they stick during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool fully before cutting. Cornstarch thickens as the milk cools and sets. If the squares are cut while still warm, they may be too soft to hold their shape through dipping and frying.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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