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Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are fried bread coated in a cinnamon-sugar batter.

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 the bread

  1. Slice the stale bread.

  2. Dip the sliced bread in cold water.

  3. Toast the bread slices until golden.

  4. Dip the toasted bread in cold water again.

Make the batter

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

Fry

  1. Coat the bread in the batter.

  2. Drop the coated bread into hot oil.

  3. Fry for about 1 minute until golden.

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
Forms the base of the fritter and absorbs the batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the bread and sets when fried.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the batter bind and brown.
Egg white
Adds structure and lightness to the batter as it sets.
Milk
Loosens the batter and adds moisture and browning through milk sugars.

The step that matters

Dip the toasted bread in cold water again. Bread that is too wet makes the batter slide off or fry greasy. A brief dip before coating keeps the surface damp enough for the batter to cling, while the toasting has already dried the crumb so the fritter stays firm rather than soggy.

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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