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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are small fried cakes made with apples, eggs, flour, milk, lemon, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk 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 ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped apples, eggs, salt, baking powder, milk, beaten egg, flour, and lemon juice and pulp. Mix until well combined.

  2. Heat lard in a pan over medium-high heat.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve with silver sauce, adding the grated peel of half the lemon.

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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds the fritters together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters puff and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a dropping consistency.
Apples
Provide fruit pieces and moisture that stay tender inside the fried batter.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly. Medium-high heat sets the outside fast so the inside cooks through without burning.

Swap the apple

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

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

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