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Fritters

A batter of flour, water, eggs, and salt fried in lard to make golden brown fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Fritters

Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Slowly pour boiling water over the sifted flour while stirring continuously.

  2. Once the mixture cools, stir in the beaten eggs.

  3. Add the salt and mix well.

Fry

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the batter in boiling lard until golden brown.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure; boiling water swells its starch into a thick, cohesive paste.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the hot fat.
Lard
Fries the batter, conducting heat to brown and crisp the outside of each fritter.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water slowly while stirring. Adding the boiling water gradually and stirring constantly lets the starch in the flour gelatinize evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth batter.

“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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