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Dessert

Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are slices of bread soaked in milk, dipped in egg, and fried with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the bread in a dish and pour the milk over it until each piece is wet but not soft, about 10 minutes.

  2. Add flavoring to the milk or egg as desired.

Fry

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Dip the soaked bread in the beaten egg and fry until brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the fritter and soaks up the milk and egg to set during frying.
Egg
Binds the coating and helps it set and brown in the pan.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture to the fritter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the outside and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. Bread soaked too long turns soft and falls apart in the pan, while bread soaked too briefly stays dry and does not absorb enough egg to brown well. Wet but not soft pieces hold their shape and fry evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, 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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