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Kentish Fritters

A batter of eggs, flour, milk, yeast and apples fried into golden fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Kentish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks together.

  2. Mix in the flour, milk, and yeast.

  3. Pour the mixture into a jug, cover it, and let it sit by the fire for 24 hours.

  4. Add the chopped apples to the batter.

Fry

  1. Fry the fritters in hot oil 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Trap air to lighten the batter's texture.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it cooks.
Yeast
Leavens the batter so it rises during resting and frying.
Apples
Add moisture, sweetness, and fruity flavor to the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is too cool lets fritters soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks. Frying at a steady temperature gives a crisp, evenly cooked result, and browning comes from the Maillard reaction.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, 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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