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Dessert

Fritters

Sweet almond fritters made with eggs, whole milk, flour, orange flower or cinnamon water, sugar, nutmeg, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fritters

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat and strain the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add whole milk and flour to make a thick pancake batter.

  3. Fry the batter in hot lard until pale.

  4. Pound the pancake until smooth, then mix in the yolks of 4 eggs and the whites of 2 eggs.

  5. Add orange‑flower water or cinnamon‑water, ground almonds, sugar, and nutmeg, and pound until smooth.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a large stewpan half full of lard until hot.

  2. Drop the batter into the hot lard in large nut‑sized portions.

  3. Turn the fritters as they brown, then remove them onto clean paper to drain.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and, as yolks and whites, add richness and structure to the fritters.
All-purpose flour
Forms the thick batter base whose starch sets when fried, giving the fritters body.
New milk
Adds moisture and liquid to hydrate the flour into a pourable batter.
Blanched almonds
Provide nutty flavour and body to the batter once ground and pounded in.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown when fried.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into the hot lard in nut-sized portions. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Portions that are too large may cook through unevenly, leaving the centre raw while the outside over-browns.

Swap the orange

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

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

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