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Dessert

French Fritters, Batter for

A batter made from butter, milk, flour, eggs, salt or sugar, used for frying French fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Fritters, Batter for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the butter in warm milk.

  2. Blend in the flour and work until smooth.

Finish and fry

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter just before using.

  2. Season with salt for vegetables or sweeten with sugar for fruit fritters.

  3. Fry for about 10 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the batter a softer, more tender bite.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it fries.
Eggs
Whisked whites trap air that lightens the batter and helps it puff when fried.

The step that matters

Fold in the whisked egg whites just before using. Whisked whites hold trapped air bubbles. Folding gently keeps those bubbles intact, and if the batter sits or is overmixed, it loses air and fries up heavier and flatter.

“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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