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Dessert

Plain Fritters

A batter of buttermilk, sweet milk, eggs, salt, baking soda, and flour is fried in lard and served with pudding sauce or sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk and sweet milk.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and baking soda; mix well.

  3. Stir in enough flour to create a thick batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until hot.

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

  3. Serve with liquid pudding sauce, or sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg, or serve plain.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Buttermilk or sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to make the fritters rise and turn tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the fritters.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, lifting the batter for a lighter texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the thick batter its body and structure.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot lard and fry until light brown.. The lard must be fully hot before the batter goes in. Cold fat lets the batter soak up oil and turn greasy, while proper heat sets the outside quickly and browns it evenly.

“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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