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Dessert

Plain Fritters

Sweet bread fritters made with milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and served with butter, wine, and Seville orange garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plain Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix grated bread crumbs into the milk until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the yolks of 5 eggs, sugar, and nutmeg to the mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan.

  2. Fry spoonfuls of the batter until golden brown.

  3. Serve with melted butter, wine, and sugar poured over the fritters.

  4. Garnish with powdered sugar, cinnamon, and Seville oranges.

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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a batter that holds its shape when fried.
Egg yolks (in the method)
Enrich the batter and help it set and brown as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs soften into.
Lard
Fries the batter, giving a crisp, golden-brown surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the fritters.

The step that matters

Fry spoonfuls of the batter until golden brown. The batter must be cooled and thick enough to hold its shape. If it is too thin or the lard is not hot enough, the fritters spread, absorb grease and brown unevenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

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