Skip to main content
Main

Fritters

Batter-coated pieces fried in lard, with variations of apple, currants, lemon, French roll, or potato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fritters

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple and lemon fritters

  1. Make fritters by dropping a small quantity of pancake batter into a pan.

  2. For apple fritters, add sliced and cored apples to the batter and fry each slice.

  3. For a variation, add currants or thinly sliced lemon to the batter.

Make the Spanish fritters

  1. For Spanish fritters, cut a French roll into finger-thick lengths.

  2. Soak the roll pieces in cream, nutmeg, sugar, pounded cinnamon, and 1 egg.

  3. Fry the soaked pieces until golden brown and serve with butter, wine, and sugar sauce.

Make the potato fritters

  1. For potato fritters, boil and scrape 2 large potatoes finely.

  2. Beat 4 egg yolks and 3 egg whites, then mix with the potatoes, 1 tablespoon cream, 1 tablespoon sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  3. Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until light.

  4. Heat fine lard in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into it to fry.

  5. Serve with a sauce made of white wine, lemon juice, 1 tablespoon peach-leaf or almond water, and warmed white 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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Nutmeg + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites give the potato batter structure and lightness when fried.
Potatoes
Finely scraped potato adds body and moisture to the batter.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the batter and soaking liquid.
French roll
Soaked bread absorbs the custard-like mixture and fries to a golden crust.
Apple
Sliced apple becomes tender and sweet inside the fried batter.

The step that matters

Beating the potato batter. Beating for at least 30 minutes until light incorporates air into the egg mixture, which helps the fritters rise and stay tender rather than dense when fried.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cream, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, egg, potato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cream, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, egg, potato. 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.

More fritters recipes

Corn 396Apple 377Oyster 129Potato 119Clam 113Rice 108 See all 48 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes