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Dessert

Mid-lent Fritters

Fritters made from milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks, semolina, and brandy, fried in lard and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mid-lent Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil the milk with butter and sugar.

  2. Blend in the egg yolks and enough semolina to form a firm paste.

  3. Add brandy or flavoring essence.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the paste into rings and dust with flour.

  2. Fry the rings in lard until golden.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar before serving.

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. Semolina + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 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).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina thickens into a firm paste.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the semolina paste.
Semolina
Thickens the milk into a firm paste that holds its shape when formed into rings.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender texture.
Lard
Conducts heat in frying, browning the outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry the rings in lard until golden. The paste must be firm enough to hold its ring shape. Frying at a steady heat browns the outside while the inside cooks through, so the rings stay intact and are not greasy.

“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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