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Bread Fritters

Bread fritters made by frying a batter of soaked bread, eggs, sugar, spices, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread, then drain and squeeze it dry.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light, then mix in the sugar.

  3. Add the soaked bread, cinnamon, lemon rind and juice, currants, chopped almonds, raisins, salt, and the beaten egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat or butter.

  2. Fry until golden brown and serve with stewed prunes or jelly.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

White bread
Soaked and squeezed, it forms the body of the fritters and holds the batter together.
Eggs
Beaten yolks enrich the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it puff when fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the yolks lighten when beaten.
Currants
Add chewy bursts of sweetness and moisture throughout the fritters.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the fritters.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft batter.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites. Whites must be beaten into a foam and folded in gently; deflating them makes the fritters dense rather than light and airy when fried.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, almond, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, almond, raisin. 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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