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Dessert

Lemon Frittees

A fried dough disc flavored with lemon, nutmeg, cinnamon, and served with a lemon‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Frittees

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Add grated lemon peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and cream; mix well.

  3. Fold in the egg whites, then gradually add flour to form a soft paste.

  4. Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick and cut into small circles.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the circles in hot lard until they puff up like crullers.

  2. Drain on clean paper and serve warm.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix lemon juice, grated lemon peel, powdered sugar, wine, and beaten egg whites.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the dough and whites lighten it, giving the fritters an airy, tender texture.
All-purpose flour
Forms the soft paste that gives the fritters their structure once fried.
Lard
Hot frying fat cooks the dough quickly, making it puff and brown on the outside.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the dough tender.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and sauce and helps the yolks blend smooth.

The step that matters

Fry the circles in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters absorb fat and turn greasy instead of puffing. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the inside can puff and cook through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, flour, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, flour, sauce. 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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