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Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are batter-coated apple slices fried in lard and served with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, flour, eggs, salt, baking powder, and sugar until smooth.

  2. Carefully stir in thin slices of cooking apples.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown and serve with syrup.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure once it sets in hot fat.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the fritters rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a smooth consistency.
Cooking apples
Provide moisture and tart flavour that contrasts with the sweet batter.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly on contact. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb grease and turn heavy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the apple

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

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

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