Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Milk Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a pan, mix half of the flour with milk to form a batter.
Heat the mixture on the fire, stirring continuously until it boils.
Remove from heat and stir in the remaining flour, eggs, and salt.
Fry
Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a pot of boiling lard.
Fry until the fritters are light brown.
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.
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the batter's structure, and the cooked starch sets the fritter's body.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the fritters set.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb.
- Lard
- Frying fat that conducts heat and browns the outside of the fritters.
The step that matters
Heating the flour and milk mixture until it boils. Cooking the mixture while stirring gelatinizes the flour's starch, which thickens the batter and gives a stable, cohesive dough that holds its shape in hot fat.
“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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