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Dessert

Apple Fritters, French Receipt

Apple fritters are thin apple slices soaked in brandy, coated in a flour and egg batter, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Fritters, French Receipt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel the apples, remove the core, and slice them thinly.

  2. Sprinkle the powdered sugar and grated lemon peel over the apples and let them soak in the brandy.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and enough warm water to create a thick paste.

  2. Make a hole in the center of the paste and add the brandy, mixing it in.

  3. Beat the egg white and yolk separately, then fold them into the paste.

Fry

  1. Fry the soaked apple slices in the batter until golden brown.

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. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Form the main body of the fritter and soften into tender fruit when fried.
Egg
Adds richness and, when beaten and folded in, helps the batter set and become light.
Fine flour
Forms the starch and gluten network that gives the batter its body and coating structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps browning as the coating fries.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the soaked apples and the batter.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked apple slices in the batter until golden brown. Frying at a steady, hot temperature sets the batter quickly and browns it before the apple inside turns mushy. Too cool oil makes greasy, soggy fritters, while too hot oil burns the outside before the fruit is tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, brandy, flour, 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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