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Dessert

Lemon Fkitters

Small fried dough circles flavoured with lemon, nutmeg, cinnamon and cream, served warm with a lemon and wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Lemon Fkitters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Add grated lemon peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and cream. Mix well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. Stir in the flour until a soft paste forms.

  5. Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick.

  6. Cut into small circles using a tumbler or cake cutter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the circles in hot lard until they puff up.

  2. Drain on clean paper and serve warm.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix lemon juice, grated lemon peel, powdered sugar, wine, and beaten egg whites until combined.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift through the beaten whites, and richness from the yolks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the soft paste that gives the fritters their body once cooked.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and adds a fine, smooth texture to the batter.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the dough tender.
Lard
Heated frying fat that cooks the dough quickly and browns its surface.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that helps the fritters puff. Stirring or beating vigorously deflates the foam, leaving dense fritters that do not rise well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, flour, sauce. 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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