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Dessert

Cream Fritters

A fried batter made with flour, eggs, lard, butter, and milk, served with butter and sugar or apple pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, egg yolks, and baking powder.

  2. Add lard and butter, mixing until the size of a hickory nut.

  3. Gradually add milk to create a thick batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot lard and fry until golden.

  3. Serve with butter and sugar, or dip apple pieces in the batter before frying.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the fritters together as they fry.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a cohesive dough-like mass.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters rise and become light.
Lard
Works into the flour as fat for tenderness, and provides the hot frying medium for browning.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, contributing richness and aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the lard and butter. Mixing until the fat reaches the size of a hickory nut leaves small fat pieces spread through the flour. These coat flour particles and limit gluten development, so the fritters stay tender rather than tough.

“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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