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Fritters, &C

Fritters made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, cinnamon, and plums, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Fritters, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ cup of flour with 5 eggs, keeping 3 egg whites aside.

  2. Heat fresh butter in a frying pan until hot.

Fry and serve

  1. Fill a teacup halfway with batter, add a plum, and top with more batter.

  2. Carefully drop the batter into the hot butter, forming round fritters.

  3. Fry until golden brown, then sprinkle with sifted sugar before serving.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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
Provide structure and lift, setting the batter around the plum as it cooks.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it holds its round shape in the fat.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the batter so it stays loose enough to spoon.
Plums
Add juicy sweetness and aroma that fills the fritter as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown during frying.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into hot butter. Fat that is not hot enough lets the batter soak up grease and stick, while hot fat sets the outside quickly so the fritter keeps its round shape and browns evenly.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, sugar, cinnamon, butter. 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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