Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Bread Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Beat the eggs, sugar, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Cut the bread into ½-inch thick slices, then cut each slice in half, leaving the crust on.
Soak the bread pieces in the custard mixture until fully absorbed.
Fry and serve
Heat a frying pan with the butter until hot enough to brown.
Carefully lay the soaked bread in the pan and fry until both sides are light brown, using a cake turner to flip.
For the sauce, mix the leftover custard with 1 tablespoon of sugar and a little wine.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + winetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,645 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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
- Eggs
- Bind the custard and help the bread set into a tender, cohesive fritter.
- Bread (in the method)
- Absorbs the custard and fries to a crisp, golden outside with a soft center.
- Butter
- Fat for frying that browns the bread surfaces and adds rich flavor.
- Rich sweet milk
- Liquid base of the custard that soaks into the bread and keeps it moist.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the fritter surfaces brown when fried.
The step that matters
Fry until both sides are light brown. The pan must be hot enough to brown the butter-coated bread quickly. If the heat is too low, the soaked bread absorbs fat and turns greasy and soggy instead of golden and crisp.
“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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