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Dessert

Pumpkin Fritters

A fried batter made from boiled pumpkin, eggs, butter, and flour, served with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and pumpkin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,744 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pumpkin Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the pumpkin until soft and mash it nicely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed pumpkin with 2 to 3 eggs, ½ cup of butter, and enough flour to create a batter that can be fried without breaking.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the batter in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve warm, sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

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. Cinnamon + pumpkintop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Pumpkin
Provides the moist, soft body of the batter and the main flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mashed pumpkin and help hold the fritters together while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which helps browning and a tender interior.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape in hot oil.

The step that matters

Adjusting the flour in the batter. Pumpkin varies in moisture, so the batter must be thick enough to hold its shape. If it is too wet, the spoonfuls will spread and break apart in the hot oil, so add flour until it holds together.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon. 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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