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Dessert

Fritters

Fritters are batter‑based fried snacks made with apples, bread, or potatoes, served with butter, wine, and sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Fritters

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Make pancake batter.

  2. Drop small quantities of batter into a pan.

Fry the apple fritters

  1. For apple fritters, add sliced apples to the batter.

  2. Fry each apple slice until golden brown.

Fry the Spanish fritters

  1. For Spanish fritters, cut French roll into finger‑thick pieces.

  2. Soak the cut French roll pieces in cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and an egg.

  3. Fry the soaked French roll pieces until golden brown.

  4. Serve with butter, wine, and sugar sauce.

Make and fry the potato fritters

  1. For potato fritters, boil and scrape two large potatoes.

  2. Mix the scraped potatoes with four egg yolks, three egg whites, cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  3. Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until light.

  4. Heat fine lard in a pan.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot lard to fry.

  6. Fry until golden brown.

  7. Serve with a sauce of white wine, lemon juice, peach‑leaf or almond water, and warmed 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites add richness and structure, helping the batter set and hold together when fried.
Potatoes
Scraped boiled potatoes give the potato fritters body and a soft, moist interior.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the batter and giving a tender crumb.
French roll
Soaking in cream and egg lets the bread absorb liquid, so it fries to a custardy interior.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the fritters and gives them a crisp golden surface.

The step that matters

Beating the potato batter. Beating for at least 30 minutes lets air into the mixture, lightening the batter so the fritters rise and stay tender rather than dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, cream, nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, 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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