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Dessert

Fruit Fritters

A batter of milk, butter, flour, sugar, spices, and liquor is poured over sliced fruit and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk and stir in the butter until melted.

  2. Mix in the flour to create a batter.

  3. Sweeten the batter to taste and add nutmeg, cinnamon, and liquor or brandy.

  4. Whisk the egg whites and fold them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the dripping or lard in a pan.

  2. Dip the sliced fruits into the batter and fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain the fritters and sprinkle with sifted sugar before serving.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Brandy + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Butter and flour 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, setting around the fruit as it fries.
Egg whites
Whisked and folded in to lighten the batter and help it puff while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the batter a tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour into a batter.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped fruit. The dripping or lard must be hot enough to crisp the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of golden.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, brandy, 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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