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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried batter-coated apple pieces served with pounded sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples, then stew them with a little water, sugar, and lemon peel until soft.

  2. Add a little white wine and the juice of half a lime to the apples, along with a bit of butter, and let cool.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and mix with the batter.

  2. Make a batter by mixing flour, cream, white wine, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter or ghee in a frying pan, add the fruit, and fry spoonfuls of the mixture until light brown.

  2. Drain on a sieve before serving and sprinkle with pounded sugar.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. White wine + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whites beaten stiff add lightness and help the batter rise and puff when fried.
Fine flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the fritters structure once cooked.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the batter, softening the crumb.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to both the batter and the apples.
Apples
Provide the fruit and moisture, becoming soft and sweet when stewed.

The step that matters

Frying the fritters until light brown. The fritters need enough heat to brown and set the outside quickly, while the inside cooks through. Too cool and they absorb fat and turn greasy; too hot and they brown before the centre sets.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, cream, white wine, sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, cream, white wine, sugar, butter. 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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