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Dessert

Fritters

A small fried cake made with lemon rind, suet, sugar, lemon juice, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fritters

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated lemon rind, suet, and castor sugar.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice, milk, and beaten eggs until well mixed.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop small quantities of the mixture into boiling fat.

  2. Fry for about 5 minutes until golden brown on each side.

  3. Remove and serve on a very hot dish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a light, tender structure when fried.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the fritters tender and moist inside.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the outside brown in the hot fat.
Milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter so it holds together with the eggs.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to seal the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil, turns greasy and cooks unevenly before the centre is set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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