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Dessert

Apple Fritters

A batter of eggs, sour cream, and flour with chopped apples, fried in lard and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whisk eggs, sour cream, baking soda, salt, and enough flour to thicken into a light batter.

  2. Pare and finely chop the apples.

  3. Stir the apples and sugar into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until hot.

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

  3. Fry until light brown.

  4. Sprinkle with white sugar as you remove them from the pan.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the hot fat.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the fritters tender inside.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the spoonfuls hold their shape while frying.
Apples
Provide moisture and sweetness, and their pieces soften during frying.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Fry in hot lard so the outside sets and browns quickly before the centre cooks through. Oil that is not hot enough lets the batter soak up grease and turn heavy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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