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Dessert

Currant Fritters

A fried batter of flour, currants, milk, and eggs, dusted with white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, currants, milk, and egg yolks together until well combined.

  2. Heat oil in a pan until boiling.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil and fry quickly until golden brown.

  2. Drain on soft paper to remove excess oil.

  3. Pile fritters high on a dish and sprinkle with 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.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 bind the batter, while the separately beaten whites are not used in the listed steps.
Flour
Provides the starch and body that hold the batter together while it fries.
Milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter so it forms soft, tender fritters.
Currants
Add sweetness, fruity flavour, and bursts of moisture within the fritters.

The step that matters

Fry quickly in hot oil. The oil must be hot enough to set the outside fast and brown it before the batter soaks up grease. Oil that is too cool makes greasy, heavy fritters.

Swap the currant

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

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

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