Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Fritters

Orange fritters are orange slices coated in a batter of cream, eggs, flour, and brandy, then fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat together the cream, eggs, flour, and brandy until smooth.

  2. Peel the orange very thinly and cut it into slices or quarters.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan and fry the orange pieces in the batter until golden.

  2. Serve the fritters in a napkin.

  3. Dust the fritters with powdered 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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture, so the batter coats the orange and stays tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and hold its shape when fried.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the batter so it clings to the orange pieces.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor that complements the orange.
Orange
Provides the main flavor and a juicy centre inside the golden batter.

The step that matters

Frying the orange in the batter. The oil must be hot enough to set and brown the batter quickly. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up oil and turns greasy before it crisps, and the orange may overcook.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, flour, brandy, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes