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Pineapple Fritters

Fried pineapple slices coated in a sweet batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pineapple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pineapple

  1. Pare and core the pineapple, then slice it into large, even rounds.

  2. Sprinkle each slice with pulverized sugar.

Make the batter

  1. In a deep dish, separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Add a pinch of salt to each dish of eggs and 1 tablespoon of sugar to the yolks.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of sweet milk and enough sifted flour to make a thin batter.

  4. Beat the yolk mixture until smooth, then add 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter or lard until very hot.

  2. Dip each pineapple slice in the batter and fry until golden brown.

  3. Place the fritters on a hot platter and sprinkle with pulverized sugar.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pineapple + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten stiff and folded in, make it light and airy.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter puff and rise as it fries.
Sifted flour
Forms the structure of the thin batter that coats each pineapple slice.
Sweet milk
Thins the batter and adds moisture so it coats the fruit evenly.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and adds a sweet finish on the hot fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot fat. If the butter or lard is not very hot, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping to golden brown. Hot fat sets the outside quickly.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, flour, butter. 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.

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