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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in batter and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Place the sliced apples in a bowl.

  3. Sprinkle the apples with sugar and ground spice.

  4. Add a little wine if desired.

  5. Let the apples marinate for about 1 hour, turning occasionally.

Batter and fry

  1. Prepare a batter similar to that used for Parsnip Fritters.

  2. Dip the apple slices into the batter.

  3. Lift the battered slices out with a fork.

  4. Drop the slices into hot lard.

  5. Fry until golden brown.

  6. Remove the fritters from the fat.

  7. Place them on brown paper to drain excess grease.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fritters on a dish.

  2. Dust with powdered sugar.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that becomes sweet and tender inside the crisp coating.
Eggs
Help bind the batter and give it structure as it fries.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the apples and crisps when fried.
Lard
Fries the fritters, adding richness and promoting browning.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelize and brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Drop the slices into hot lard. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat seals the coating quickly, so the fritters stay light and golden.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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