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Dessert

Currant Fritters

A batter of flour, egg, milk, and sugar folded with dried currants, fried in lard, served with sifted sugar and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, egg, milk, and sugar to create a light batter.

  2. Wash the dried currants and fold them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve warm, dusted with sifted sugar and drizzled with melted butter.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the fritter together as it fries.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets in the hot fat.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the mixture into a batter that spreads and cooks through.
Dried currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture studded through the fritter.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot lard. The lard must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly on the outside. If the fat is too cool, the fritters absorb more oil, turn greasy, and cook through unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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