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Dessert

Croquettes and Fritters

A sweet batter of milk, flour, eggs, and spices, fried with currants and served hot with wine and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Croquettes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whip the egg whites until very light and strain the yolks.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread.

  3. Mix in the butter and let it cool.

  4. Beat in the yolks, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, and stiff egg whites.

  5. Fold in the currants.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  2. Drain and serve hot with a mixture of wine and 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites whipped into foam lighten the batter, while yolks add richness and help bind it.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the fritters their body and set structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the batter, helping it hold together and cook through.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the batter and tenderizes its crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the outside brown during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. Batter dropped into hot lard sets and browns quickly on the outside, which limits oil absorption and keeps the fritters from turning greasy or falling apart. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter soaks up fat and cooks unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, flour, 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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