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Dessert

Strawberry Fritters

A sweet fried treat made with strawberries, spongecake, and a batter of flour, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Strawberry Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix crushed strawberries with sugar and vanilla to taste.

  2. Moisten spongecake strips with Madeira wine.

  3. Place sweetened strawberries between two strips of spongecake.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, egg, and milk to make a batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Coat the filled spongecake with the batter.

  2. Heat lard in a pan and fry the coated spongecake until golden.

  3. Dust with sugar and serve hot.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Spongecake
Soaked in wine, it gives the fritter a moist, tender center under the crisp coating.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter that coats the filling and crisps into a golden shell when fried.
Egg
Binds the batter so it clings to the filling and sets firmly in the hot fat.
Milk
Thins the flour and egg into a pourable batter that coats evenly and browns during frying.
Crushed strawberries
Provide fruit flavor and moisture to the filling, sweetened with sugar.

The step that matters

Frying the coated spongecake until golden. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy, and the filling may warm through before the coating browns.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Lemonfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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