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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a batter of eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add the sweet milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar to the eggs.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a nice batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop the apple slices into the batter, ensuring they are well coated.

  2. Fry the coated apple slices in boiling fat until golden brown.

  3. Remove from fat and sprinkle thickly with 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the fat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the batter puff and lighten.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to the baking soda, producing gas that helps the fritters rise.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter so it coats the apple slices and holds together.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling, becoming tender and sweet inside the crisp batter.

The step that matters

Fry the coated apple slices in boiling fat until golden brown.. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the fritters absorb oil and turn greasy and heavy instead of crisp and browned.

Swap the apple

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

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

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