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Good Fritters

Apple fritters made by battering thin apple slices and frying in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Good Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix ½ pint of thick cream with flour until smooth.

  2. Beat 6 eggs, reserving 4 egg whites, and add to the cream mixture.

  3. Stir in 6 tablespoons of Canary wine, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and salt.

  4. Add another ½ pint of cream and beat the batter for 1 hour.

Fry the apples

  1. Slice apples thinly.

  2. Dip each apple slice in the batter.

  3. Fry the batter‑coated apple slices in boiling lard.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the hot fat.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a batter that coats the apple slices.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the batter a tender texture.
Canary wine
Adds moisture and flavour to the batter.
Apples
Provide the main fruit filling and sweet, tender bite inside the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the batter-coated apple slices in boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly into a crisp coating; if it is too cool, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy while the apple cooks unevenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, egg, wine, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, egg, wine, nutmeg, ginger, 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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