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Dessert

Dessert Fritters

Dessert fritters are fried batter made with milk, eggs, flour, salt, and served hot with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dessert Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk and flour to form a thick batter.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and salt to the batter.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat plenty of boiling lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until puffed and golden.

  3. Serve hot with hard sauce.

  4. Spread with butter and sprinkle with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites folded in add lightness and help the fritters puff.
Flour
Forms the thick batter structure that sets around the frying air and holds the shape.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the batter and adds moisture and richness.
Boiling lard
Fries the batter quickly, driving off moisture and producing a golden, crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Stirring vigorously deflates the whites' trapped air, which is the main source of lift, so the fritters turn out dense instead of puffed.

“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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