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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a batter of eggs, milk, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Spread the apple slices on a dish and sprinkle with lemon juice and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light, then add the milk.

  2. Fold in the whisked egg whites and sifted flour alternately.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the apple slices into the batter, turning until thoroughly coated.

  2. Fry in hot lard a few at a time until golden brown.

  3. Drain on a hot sieve and sift powdered sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg over them.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Provide the fruit that softens inside the batter while the coating fries crisp.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the whites set with heat.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, setting around the apple slices as they fry.
Milk
Thins the batter to a coating consistency and adds moisture and browning from its milk sugars.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, crisping the batter and giving it a golden brown surface.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard a few at a time. Frying in batches keeps the lard hot. Crowding the pan drops its temperature, so the batter absorbs more fat and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the apple

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

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

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