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Apple or Banana Fritters

Fried batter-coated apple fritters served hot with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple or Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the milk and a little sugar to the mixture.

  3. Pare, core, and slice the apples, then stir them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into plenty of boiling lard.

  2. Remove with a skimmer and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. For extra flavor, add a little cinnamon to the sugar before serving 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 structure of the batter that holds the fritters together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during frying, making the fritters light and puffy.
Milk
Moistens the flour to form a batter with a smooth, pourable texture.
Apples
Add moisture and tart flavor, and their sugars brown lightly in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into plenty of boiling lard. Enough hot fat keeps the oil temperature steady when cold batter goes in. If the fat cools, the fritters absorb grease and turn heavy instead of crisp.

“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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