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Frying Batter

A light batter made with butter, water, flour, egg yolks, salt, and folded egg whites for frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Frying Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the butter in warm water.

  2. Mix in the flour, egg yolks, and salt until smooth.

Add the whipped whites

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the batter.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together and coats the food.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they add air and lightness to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a smooth mixture.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the batter a tender, rich texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the batter. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the batter its lightness. Stirring or beating them in deflates the foam, so the batter fries up heavier. Folding with a light, sweeping motion keeps as much air as possible.

“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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