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Dessert

Currant Fritters

A sweet batter of milk, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, currants, and spices fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Mix in the butter and let it cool.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and prepared flour.

  4. Fold in the stiff egg whites and currants dredged with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls into hot lard and fry until golden.

  2. Drain and serve hot, optionally with a mixture of wine and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they form the soft body of the fritter.
Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter and help the fritters puff and hold their shape.
Currants
Dried fruit that adds pockets of sweetness and chew in each fritter.
Prepared flour
Gives the batter structure so the fritters hold together while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiff egg whites and currants dredged with flour.. Folding gently keeps the whipped whites from deflating, which is what makes the fritters light. Dredging the currants in flour helps them stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, milk, egg, sugar, butter, cinnamon. 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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