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Dessert

Apple Fritters

A batter of milk, eggs, and flour is poured over sliced apples and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately in a bowl.

  2. Add the yolks to the milk and stir in the beaten whites.

  3. Gradually add flour until a batter forms.

Fry the fritters

  1. Peel the apples and slice them into thin rounds, removing the core from each slice.

  2. For each spoonful of batter, add a slice of apple.

  3. Fry the apple slices in hot lard until golden brown on both sides.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Beaten whites add lightness and help the batter rise and hold air while frying.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it sets around the apple slices as it fries.
Apples
Supply the fruit filling, becoming tender and sweet when cooked through.
Lard
Transfers high heat to the batter and browns the fritters on the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the apple slices in hot lard until golden brown on both sides.. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy before it sets, while the apple may stay raw inside. Hot fat sets and browns the crust quickly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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