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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple rings coated in a batter of flour, water, oil, and egg whites, served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and a pinch of salt.

  2. Gradually add salad oil and tepid water, adjusting water to achieve a thick batter.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apples into rings.

  2. Dip apple rings into the batter and fry until golden.

  3. Serve dusted with castor sugar.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the batter's structure once hydrated and set by frying.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help it puff when fried.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter tender and helps it crisp.
Apples
Provide the fruit centre, softening slightly under the hot batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that makes the batter light; overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks the air out, leaving dense fritters.

Swap the apple

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

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

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