Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a batter of milk, wine, and sugar, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel the apples and cut them into thick slices, removing the core.

  2. Soak the apple slices in white wine and sugar for 2 hours.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon and lemon rind for 15 minutes, then let it cool.

  2. Make a batter using the cooled milk and the wine from soaking the apples.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a stew-pan until hot.

  2. Fry the apple slices one at a time until golden brown.

  3. Remove them and place on paper to absorb excess fat.

  4. Dust with sugar and briefly hold a salamander over them to melt the sugar.

  5. Serve on a napkin.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Apples
Provide the fruit that is fried, giving the fritters their main body and sweet flavor.
White wine
Soaks into the apples and contributes acidity and aroma to the batter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding richness and helping it set when fried.
Lard
Fat for frying, which browns the batter and crisps the outside of the fritters.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples during soaking and forms a caramelized coating when melted.

The step that matters

Fry the apple slices one at a time until golden brown. Frying in fat that is hot but not overcrowded keeps the temperature up, so the batter browns and crisps rather than absorbing oil and turning greasy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, white wine, sugar, milk, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, white wine, sugar, milk, cinnamon. 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.

More apple fritters recipes

Potato 3 See all 377 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes