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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple slices coated in batter and fried until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples, then slice them evenly.

  2. Sprinkle the apple slices with sugar and let them sit for 30 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, sift the flour and salt, then gradually add the oil and water, stirring until smooth.

  2. Let the batter rest for at least 1 hour, then fold in the beaten egg white.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each apple slice into the batter, then carefully drop it into hot frying fat.

  2. Fry slowly until crisp and lightly browned, then drain on paper towels.

  3. Dust with sugar and serve immediately.

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. Apple + buttertop 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

Apples
Provide the fruit that softens and turns sweet-tart when fried inside the batter.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, setting into a crisp coating around each apple slice.
Egg white
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and help it puff and crisp when fried.
Salad oil or oiled butter
Adds fat to the batter, tenderizing it and helping it brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Frying the battered slices. Oil that is too cool lets the batter soak up fat and turn greasy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the apple cooks through. Frying slowly at a steady heat gives a crisp, evenly colored coating.

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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