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Fritter

A sweet cornmeal fritter made by frying batter in hot fat, then dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Fritter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, egg, scalded cornmeal, salt, and baking soda until smooth.

Fry

  1. Heat fat in a deep pan until it smokes.

  2. Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat.

  3. Fry until golden brown, then remove with a skimmer.

Serve

  1. Drain excess fat, pile fritters in a hot dish, and sift sugar over them.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the batter, giving the fritters their gritty, sturdy body when fried.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together around the cornmeal.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the fritters together while they cook.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to lighten it and help the fritters rise and brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Heating the fat until it smokes. If the fat is not hot enough, batter absorbs oil instead of crisping, leaving greasy fritters. Fat that is too hot can scorch 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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