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Plain Fritters

Bread fritters made from milk, grated bread, egg yolks, sugar, fried in lard, served with sweet sauce and preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated bread and stir until smooth.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Incorporate the egg yolks and sugar, mixing well.

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.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce and preserves.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and sugar 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

Bread (in the method)
Grated crumb thickens the milk into a soft mixture that holds its shape when fried.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter so it sets in the hot lard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the grated bread soaks up to form a smooth base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the fried surface.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy rather than forming a crisp golden crust. Sufficiently hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the fritters hold their shape and brown evenly.

“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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