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Dessert

To Make Apple Fritters

A batter of milk, eggs, and flour is used to coat thin apple slices, then fried in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Make Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  2. Add the yolks to the milk and stir in the whites.

  3. Add enough flour to make a batter.

Fry the apples

  1. Peel the apples and slice them thinly, removing the core from each slice.

  2. Dip each apple slice into the batter.

  3. Fry the battered apple slices in hot lard until light brown on both sides.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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, beaten separately and stirred in, lighten its texture.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure so it coats the apple slices and sets when fried.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, hydrating the flour and giving it a smooth consistency.
Tender apples
Provide the fruit filling inside the crisp fried coating and a soft, sweet bite.

The step that matters

Fry the battered apple slices in hot lard. The lard must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs excess fat and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour. 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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