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Dessert

Spanish Fritters

Bread slices soaked in milk, eggs, spices, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Spanish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk or cream, beaten eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon essence, and sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread slices and let them absorb the liquid until soft but not too mushy.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil or butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the soaked bread slices until they are a nice light brown on both sides.

  3. Serve with or without sauce.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the fritter and soaks up the custard so it turns soft inside.
Eggs
Bind the milk mixture and set during frying to give the fritters structure.
Milk or cream
Supplies the liquid that the bread absorbs, adding moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. If the slices soak too briefly they stay dry in the centre, and if they soak too long they fall apart in the pan. Soft but intact slices fry evenly and hold their shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, butter. 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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