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Dessert

Fritter Batter

A batter made from flour, milk, butter, salt, eggs, and optional sugar for fruit fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fritter Batter

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fritter Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the milk and salt to the eggs.

  3. Pour half of this mixture into the flour and beat until light and smooth.

  4. Add the remaining butter and mix well.

  5. If using with fruit, add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and serve on a hot dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter as its starch and gluten set during frying.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly and brown it. If it is too cool, fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy.

“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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