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Dessert

Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are slices of stale bread coated in a cinnamon‑sweet batter and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice stale bread and dip it in cold water.

  2. Toast the bread slices.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, egg yolk, egg white, cinnamon, salt, sugar, and milk to make a batter.

Fry

  1. Dip the toasted bread in cold water again, then coat it in the batter.

  2. Drop the coated bread into hot oil and fry for about 1 minute 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.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Stale bread
Provides the base structure, and its dry crumb soaks up the batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the bread and sets during frying.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the batter set and brown.
Egg white
Adds lift and a lighter, airy texture to the batter.
Milk
Moistens the batter and adds softness and browning through milk sugars.

The step that matters

Frying the coated bread in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot oil sets the coating quickly and gives golden browning.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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