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Spanish Fritters

Bread slices soaked in a spiced milk and egg mixture, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spanish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. In a bowl, combine milk or cream, beaten eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon extract, and sugar. Mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread slices, allowing them to absorb the liquid without becoming too soft.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan and fry the soaked bread slices until golden brown on both sides.

  2. Serve with or without sweet 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Bind the soak and set on frying, giving the slices structure and a custard-like interior.
Milk or cream
Supplies the liquid that the bread soaks up, keeping the slices moist and tender.
Bakers' bread
Absorbs the egg mixture and becomes the body of the fritter once fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. Slices that soak too long turn soft and fall apart in the hot oil, while slices that soak too briefly stay dry in the centre. Soak until the liquid is absorbed but the slice still holds its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, bread. 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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