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Sour Milk Fritters

Fritters made from sour milk, egg, flour, baking soda, and butter, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sour Milk Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, egg, and melted butter.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture thickens.

  3. Stir in baking soda until well mixed.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter.

  2. Fry until golden brown and 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sour milk
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to make the fritters rise and tender.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the hot oil.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the fritters their body once cooked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas, lifting the batter for a lighter texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the fritters brown.

The step that matters

Stir in baking soda until well mixed. Baking soda reacts with acid in the sour milk immediately, releasing gas. Mixing it in evenly and frying soon after keeps the batter lifting, so fritters stay light instead of flat.

“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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