Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
German Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread
Remove the crust from the bread and cut it into 1-inch-wide strips.
Soak the bread strips in the milk and egg mixture.
Drain the soaked bread well.
Fry and serve
Fry the bread strips in hot butter until golden brown.
Roll the fried fritters in caster sugar and serve piled on a hot dish.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Its dry, firm crumb soaks up the milk and egg mixture without falling apart.
- Eggs
- They bind the soaked bread and set during frying to give the fritters structure.
- Milk
- It moistens the bread so the inside stays soft while the outside browns.
- Butter
- It fries the strips to a golden brown and adds rich flavour.
The step that matters
Draining the soaked bread well. Excess liquid left on the bread turns to steam in hot butter, making the fritters greasy and stopping them from browning properly.
“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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