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Dessert

Fritters, Fruit

A batter of flour, oil, and water coated fruit slices, fried and sprinkled with castor sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Fritters, Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Make a well in the center and pour in the oil.

  3. Gradually add the tepid water and mix until smooth. Beat well.

  4. Let the batter stand for an hour if possible.

  5. Gently fold in the whipped egg white.

Fry and serve

  1. Peel the apples, slice them, and remove the core, leaving a ring.

  2. Dip the apple slices in the batter.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  4. Drain on paper.

  5. Serve on lace paper sprinkled with castor sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 structure of the batter that coats the fruit and crisps when fried.
Egg white
Whipped and folded in, it lightens the batter and helps it puff and stay airy.
Apples or bananas
The fruit inside the batter; its moisture steams as it cooks while the coating browns.
Oil
Carries heat to the batter so it browns and crisps quickly, and adds richness.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white gently. Whipped egg white holds air in the batter. Stirring it vigorously knocks that air out, so the fritters turn out dense instead of light and puffy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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