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Spanish Fritters

A fried bread dish made by coating stale bread slices in a milk, egg, and salt custard and frying in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spanish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the stale bread into slices.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, and salt to make a custard.

  2. Dip each slice of bread into the custard, ensuring it is well coated.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated bread slices in hot butter until they are light brown.

  2. Serve with syrup or wine sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its dry, porous crumb soaks up the custard without falling apart.
Milk
Provides liquid that combines with the eggs to form a soft, moist custard coating.
Eggs
Set in the custard, binding it to the bread and giving a tender, rich interior.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the custard-coated surface and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry in hot butter until light brown. If the butter is not hot enough, the soaked bread absorbs fat and turns greasy before the custard sets. Enough heat sets the egg coating quickly and browns the surface.

“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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