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Egg Fritters

Egg fritters are small pancakes made from eggs, water, butter, flour, fried in lard and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Egg Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add cold water and melted butter, then mix in the flour.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard.

  2. Fry until browned on one side, then flip and brown the other side.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar while hot and serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, folded in, lighten its texture and help the fritters rise.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the fritters together as they set in the fat.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the batter.
Lard
Conducts heat to brown the outside quickly and gives the fritters a crisp, golden surface.

The step that matters

Frying in smoking hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy before it sets. If it is too hot, the outside browns and burns before the centre cooks through.

“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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