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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple halves coated in a batter of flour, milk, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, salt, cream or milk, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes with a spoon or whisk.

  3. Pare and halve the apples, remove the cores, and add them to the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Using a fork, take the apple halves out one at a time and fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + appletop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a light, sturdy coating around the apples.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together and clings to the apple halves.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, thinning the batter to a coating consistency.
Holland pippins (apples)
Supply the fruit inside the batter, softening as they cook while the outside browns.

The step that matters

Frying the apple halves until golden brown. The lard must be boiling hot before the battered apples go in. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping and browning quickly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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