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Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are fried dough pieces made with soaked bread, milk, flour, eggs, currants, lemon rind, and served with lettuce or cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread in milk until soft.

  2. Mash the soaked bread until fine.

  3. Add flour, beaten eggs, currants or raisins, and lemon rind; mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve garnished with lettuce or cress.

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. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Bread
Forms the body of the fritters, soaked milk softening it into a mashable base.
Milk
Softens the bread so it mashes smoothly and keeps the fritters moist.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add structure as they set in the hot oil.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly so the spoonfuls hold their shape while frying.
Currants or seedless raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the fritters absorb grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady heat gives a golden crust and a cooked interior.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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