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Dessert

Strawberry Fritters

A fried batter with strawberries, made with flour, oil, eggs, lemon peel, and white wine, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the salad oil, lemon peel, and flour together.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks and add enough white wine to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  3. At the last moment, fold in the egg whites beaten to stiff peaks.

  4. Remove the stems from large strawberries and drop them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat cooking oil in a kettle to at least 2 inches deep.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil, allowing one strawberry per fritter.

  3. Fry until golden brown.

  4. Remove with a skimmer and place on brown paper in the oven.

  5. Dust with sugar before serving.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Whipped whites add lightness, and yolks enrich the batter and help bind it.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds each fritter together.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter tender and moist.
White wine
Thins the batter to a cream consistency and adds a little acidity.
Large strawberries
Provide fruit flavor and moisture inside each fritter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites at the last moment. Beaten egg whites trap air that makes the fritters light. If they sit too long or are stirred vigorously, they deflate and the fritters turn dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, white wine, cream, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, white wine, cream, sugar. 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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