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Vienna Fritters

Vienna fritters are fried batter made with butter, sugar, lemon rind, water, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vienna Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the butter, sugar, lemon rind, and water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling fat and fry until golden.

  2. Dust with powdered sugar and serve with wine sauce.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters puff and set structure as they fry.
Flour
Forms the starch and gluten network that gives the batter body and holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender interior and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown to a golden colour.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. Eggs must be added one at a time and fully mixed in, so the batter becomes smooth and emulsified. Adding them too quickly or into a hot mixture can curdle the eggs and prevent the fritters from puffing properly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, wine, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, wine, sauce. 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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