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Dessert

Yeast Fritters

A batter of yeast, milk, butter, eggs, and flour is fried and served with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Yeast Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm milk.

  2. Warm the butter and beat it well, adding the eggs one at a time.

  3. Mix in the milk with dissolved yeast, flour, and salt.

  4. Stir the batter until smooth, cover, and let it rise in a warm place.

Fry and serve

  1. Once risen, melt butter in a frying pan and fry small quantities of the batter like thin pancakes.

  2. When browned on both sides, place on a hot dish, sift sugar and cinnamon over them, and serve immediately.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold its shape when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the fritters brown in the pan.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, which traps gas from the yeast as it rises.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast, giving the batter its liquid base and softness.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that aerates the batter. Rising too little leaves fritters dense, while the batter needs to be smooth and covered so it does not dry out.

“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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