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Cream Fritters

Cream fritters are fried batter cakes served with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, egg yolks, and baking powder.

  2. Add the lard and butter mixture.

  3. Pour in milk gradually until you achieve a thick batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve with butter and sugar, or dip apple pieces into the batter before frying.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 main structure of the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the fritters rise and turn light.
Lard and butter
Add fat for flavor and a tender texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a thick, spoonable batter.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, producing a crisp golden crust and a light interior.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, butter, milk, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, milk, 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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