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Dessert

Fritters

Fritters made with apple, raisins, and a batter of eggs, flour, milk, and yeast, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fritters

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 ↓

Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, egg whites, flour, chopped apple, raisins, sugar, yeast, and milk to form a batter. The batter should be thicker than pancake batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling butter to form fritters.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides, about 5-7 minutes.

  3. Drain excess butter and sift sugar over the fritters before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter for a tender interior.
Egg whites
Whipped air and set protein give the fritters a light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set into the fritter's body.
Apple
Adds moisture and mild sweetness that stay through frying.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture within the batter.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling butter. The butter must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up fat and the fritters turn greasy and heavy before they set.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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