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Dessert

Various Other Kinds of Fritters

Bread slices are toasted, dipped in cream, coated with an egg-lemon mixture, fried, and served with sugar and sweet sauce.

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

Various Other Kinds of Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Lightly toast the bread slices.

  2. Dip the toasted bread in cream or milk.

  3. Place the dipped bread on a dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, mace, lemon peel, sugar, and ½ cup cream.

  2. Pour a little of the mixture over each slice of toast.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the toast with the wet side down until light brown.

  2. Pour the remaining mixture on top.

  3. Fry until cooked through.

  4. Sift sugar over the fritters.

  5. Serve with sweet sauce.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Bread
Forms the base of each fritter, soaking up the custard while holding its shape when fried.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the custard and giving the fritters a firm, cooked structure.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, keeping the custard soft and tender rather than dry.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the surface brown when the fritters are fried.

The step that matters

Fry with the wet side down until light brown. Frying the soaked side first sets and browns the custard into a crust before the fritter is turned. Frying too hot can scorch the outside while the custard inside stays raw, so heat should be moderate and the fritters cooked through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, egg, lemon, 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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