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Dessert

Kremslekh

A fried dough pastry made with flour, egg, raisins, almonds, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kremslekh

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, combine Mazza flour, egg, salt, sugar, ground almonds, raisins, and ground cinnamon.

  2. Add oil or beef dripping and enough water to form a stiff paste, then mix the ingredients thoroughly.

Fry and drain

  1. In a large enameled saucepan, heat oil or animal fat until boiling, but do not let it burn.

  2. Shape the paste into small pieces and drop them into the boiling fat.

  3. Turn continually until well browned, then remove and drain on a strainer.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mazza flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the stiff paste together.
Egg
Binds the paste and helps hold the shaped pieces together while frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Oil or beef dripping
Adds fat that gives the paste richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Keep the fat boiling but not burning. Fat that is hot enough sets the outside of each piece quickly, so it browns without soaking up oil. If it burns, the outside darkens and tastes bitter before the inside is cooked. Turning the pieces continually helps them brown evenly.

“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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