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Plain Fritters

A fried batter made with eggs, milk, flour, lard, and served with cinnamon, sugar, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs very light and gradually stir them into the milk.

  2. Add the sifted flour gradually and beat the mixture hard.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard in a frying pan until it reaches a hard boil.

  2. Pour about ½ cup of batter into the hot lard for each fritter.

  3. Fry until done, which takes a few minutes; they do not require turning.

  4. Serve hot with powdered cinnamon, sugar, and white wine.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set structure when fried.
Flour
Provides structure as its starches set during frying, holding the fritter together.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter into a pourable consistency.
Lard
Frying fat that transfers heat quickly and gives the fritters a crisp, browned surface.

The step that matters

Heating the lard. The lard must be very hot before the batter goes in. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy instead of crisping on the outside.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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