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Dessert

Pastry Crullers

A fried pastry made by pouring batter into a cruller iron and frying in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pastry Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour and water together.

  2. Add the butter, beaten eggs, and a little salt to the mixture.

Fry the crullers

  1. Heat the cruller iron thoroughly in boiling lard.

  2. Drain all the lard from the iron.

  3. Dip the iron into the batter, ensuring it doesn't touch the bottom or sides of the cup.

  4. Dip the iron back into the boiling lard and fry until golden brown.

  5. Remove the cruller from the iron and reheat the iron before repeating.

  6. Serve plain or sprinkle with cinnamon 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the batter.
Boiling lard
Cooks the batter quickly, browning the outside as it fries.

The step that matters

Dip the iron back into the boiling lard and fry until golden brown.. Batter that goes into lard that is not hot enough absorbs excess fat and turns greasy. Frying in properly hot fat sets the outside quickly and gives a crisp, golden crust.

“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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