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Dessert

Bread Fritters

Bread fritters are slices of bread soaked in a milk, egg, and liqueur mixture, then fried and dusted with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Bread Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Remove the crusts from the rolls and cut them into ½-inch slices.

  2. Place the slices in a deep dish.

Soak

  1. Beat the egg yolks.

  2. Add the milk and Maraschino liqueur.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

  4. Pour the mixture over the bread and let it soak for about 15 minutes.

  5. Drain the bread well.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in clarified butter until golden brown.

  2. Drain again.

  3. Sprinkle with castor sugar and ground cinnamon.

  4. Serve.

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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

French dinner rolls
Form the bread base that soaks up the custard and becomes tender inside.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soaking liquid, adding richness and helping the fritters set when fried.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks into the bread and moistens the crumb.
Clarified butter
Fries the bread, promoting even browning and a crisp golden crust.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished fritters and a crisp sugared surface.

The step that matters

Drain the bread well before frying. Excess soaking liquid left on the bread turns to steam in hot fat, causing spattering and soggy patches instead of a crisp, golden crust.

“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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