Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are made by soaking stale bread, mixing with custard, nutmeg, sugar, and frying in lard.

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

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak stale bread in water overnight.

  2. Wring the bread in a cloth to remove excess water.

  3. Break and beat the bread in a basin with a fork.

  4. Add grated nutmeg and castor sugar to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare custard using the packet of custard powder and Swiss milk according to package instructions.

  2. Combine the custard with the bread mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard and fry until golden 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Stale bread
Forms the body of the fritters and absorbs the custard, giving a soft, moist interior.
Custard powder
Thickens the milk into a custard that binds the bread and adds a smooth, sweet flavour.
Swiss milk
Provides the liquid that the custard powder thickens, adding richness to the mixture.
Lard
Fries the fritters, conducting heat to brown the outside and giving a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry and serve. The lard must be hot before the mixture goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, while cool fat lets the batter soak up oil and turn greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, milk. 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.

More bread fritters recipes

Spanish 14German 7 See all 52 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes