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Dessert

Currant Fritters

Currant fritters are small fried cakes made with flour, egg, milk, sugar, and currants.

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

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, egg, milk, and sugar to make a light batter.

  2. Fold in the washed dried currants.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan over medium heat.

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

  3. Remove from the pan and serve with sifted sugar and melted butter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 structure of the batter that holds each fritter together.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the fritters structure as they set.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a light, pourable consistency.
Dried currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout each fritter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown in the hot lard.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and becomes greasy rather than crisp and golden. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Medium heat gives an even golden crust.

Swap the currant

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

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

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