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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a batter of eggs, ale, flour, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples into rounds.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the ale.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is thicker than a common pudding.

  4. Add nutmeg and sugar to taste, then let the batter rest for 3-4 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the apple slices in the batter and fry until crisp.

  2. Serve with grated sugar on top and wine sauce on the side.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 and crisp when fried.
Ale
Thins the batter and adds a light, yeasty flavour to the coating.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the apple slices and holds together in the pan.
Apples
Provide the main body, moisture and sweet-tart flavour inside the crisp coating.

The step that matters

Frying the coated apple slices until crisp. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping, and the apple may stay undercooked. Frying in batches keeps the oil temperature steady.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, nutmeg, sugar. 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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