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Dessert

Peach Fritters

Fried peach halves coated in batter, served hot with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Peach Fritters

Why it works: Peach and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Peach Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine water, butter, and baking soda in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter before adding the flour.

  3. Stir rapidly while adding the flour and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Set aside to cool.

  5. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  6. Beat for about 5 minutes after the last egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Pare and stone the peaches or use canned peaches.

  2. Cover each peach half with the batter.

  3. Drop the batter-covered peaches into hot fat and fry for 3-4 minutes until golden.

  4. Drain the fritters and sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

  5. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Flour
Forms the starch structure that holds the batter together around the peach.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and puff when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the batter, tenderizing the fritter.
Peaches
Provide moisture and sweet fruit flavor inside the crisp batter coating.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying in hot fat sets the crust quickly, keeping the fritter light and the peach moist inside.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon. 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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