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Dessert

Lemon Fritters

A fried dough cake flavored with lemon, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lemon Fritters

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, salt, lemon peel, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. Gradually add the sweet cream and flour mixed with baking powder.

  3. Sift the mixture again before stirring in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Work quickly and lightly into a soft dough, just stiff enough to roll out.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into small, round cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in hot butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with lemon sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the fritters their body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters rise and turn light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough while adding flavour and colour.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the dough soft and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Work quickly and lightly into a soft dough. Overworking flour develops gluten, which makes the dough tough and the fritters dense. Mix only until the dough just holds together, since the baking powder starts releasing gas once wet.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, flour, butter. 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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