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Vanity Fritters

Vanity fritters are small fried dough pieces dusted with powdered sugar and topped with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Vanity Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the salt and rose water.

  3. Add sifted flour until the mixture is stiff enough to roll out.

  4. Mix in the baking powder.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut the dough with a biscuit cutter.

  2. Fry the cut pieces in hot lard until golden.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar.

  4. Top each fritter with a spoonful of jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rose + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the fritters.
Flour
Provides the body that lets the dough be stiff enough to roll out and cut.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the fritters puff and rise lightly.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the fritters a golden, crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Fry the cut pieces in hot lard until golden. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters absorb more fat and turn greasy, while overly hot lard browns the outside before the centre cooks through.

“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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