Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Fritters

A batter of flour, milk, eggs, cream, nutmeg, salt, and apples is fried into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and milk until combined.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs, grated nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Add the cream and mix just enough to combine.

  4. Fold in the chopped apples.

Fry

  1. Fry the mixture in small cakes until golden brown.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm while frying.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the fritters a tender, moist crumb.
Apples
Add moisture and sweetness, and bits of fruit throughout each fritter.

The step that matters

Mix the cream in just enough to combine. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the fritters tough and dense instead of tender. Stop as soon as the cream is incorporated and no dry streaks remain.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, nutmeg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes