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Dessert

Plain Fritters

A batter of egg, sweet milk, flour, salt, and baking powder fried into golden fritters served with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add sweet milk, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Gradually mix in enough flour to create a thick batter that holds its shape.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Serve with hot sugar syrup or hot maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the hot oil.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour into a batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape when dropped into oil.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the fritters rise and turn light and airy.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually until the batter is thick enough to hold its shape. Too little flour gives thin fritters that spread and absorb oil, while too much makes them dense and tough.

“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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