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Dessert

Fried Bread in Batter

Fried bread slices coated in a sweet batter and fried in lard, then dusted with powdered sugar and served with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fried Bread in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the sweet light dough in the sweet milk.

  2. Add the eggs, flour, and salt; mix until smooth.

Prepare and fry

  1. Cut the light bread into thin slices.

  2. Dip the bread slices into the batter.

  3. Fry the battered bread slices in hot lard until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and garnish with jelly before serving.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a tender coating around the bread.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the bread slices and holds together in the hot fat.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter, helping it brown and stay tender.
Light bread slices
Absorb the batter and form the body of the dish once fried.

The step that matters

Fry the battered bread slices in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Frying at a steady high heat sets the coating quickly and gives even browning.

“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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