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Dessert

Fruit Fritters

A batter of flour, salt, water, oil, and egg folded with fruit, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir in tepid water and salad oil until smooth.

  3. Let the mixture stand for a short while.

Finish and fry

  1. Just before using, quickly beat in the whipped egg.

  2. Fold in your choice of fruit.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure as it sets in the hot oil.
Egg
Whipped egg adds lightness and helps the fritters puff and hold together.
Salad oil
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter and helps it brown when fried.
Fruit
Adds sweetness, moisture and flavour inside the crisp batter.

The step that matters

Beat in the whipped egg just before using. Whipped egg traps air that gives lift, and it loses that air as it sits. Adding it late and mixing quickly keeps the fritters light rather than dense.

“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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