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Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are apple slices coated in batter and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Thinly pare and core the apples, leaving them whole, and cut them into slices about ⅓ inch thick.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and salad oil, then pour in the tepid water and mix well.

  2. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks and gently fold it into the batter until smooth.

Fry and drain

  1. Using a skewer, dip each apple slice into the batter and carefully drop them into hot clarified fat or lard.

  2. Fry until the skewer easily pierces the apple slices, then remove and drain on kitchen paper.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that softens and sweetens inside the crisp coating when fried.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that puffs and crisps around the apple slices.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds air and lightness to the batter.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the batter, tenderizing it and helping it brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Overmixing or deflating the stiff egg white removes the air that makes the batter light. Fold gently and only until just combined so the coating stays airy rather than dense and heavy after frying.

Swap the apple

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

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

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