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Sponge Cake Fritters

Fried fritters made from crumbled sponge cake, eggs, milk, flour, currants, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sponge Cake Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Pour the boiling milk over the crumbled sponge cake and let it cool.

  2. Stir in the flour smoothly and cover for 15 minutes.

  3. Beat the mixture until cold, then stir in the egg yolks.

  4. Add the stiffly beaten egg whites and currants.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls into boiling oil and fry until golden brown.

  2. Drain and serve hot on a d'oyley, scattering castor sugar on top.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sponge cake
Provides the main body and structure of the fritter batter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten its texture.
Pastry flour
Thickens the soaked cake mixture so the batter holds its shape.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and fruitiness throughout each fritter.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped stiff and gently folded in; overmixing or deflating them makes the fritters dense rather than light.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, 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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