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Pancakes and Fritters

A batter of white wine, flour, butter, and salt is used to coat orange quarters, which are fried and served with fine sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pancakes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix white wine, flour, melted butter, and salt until the batter is neither too thick nor too thin; it should rope when poured from a spoon.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip orange quarters into the batter and fry them in hot hog's lard until light brown.

  2. Serve glazed with fine 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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. White wine + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 batter's structure so it coats the orange quarters and sets when fried.
White wine
Thins the batter and adds moisture, helping it stay light when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Judging the batter consistency. A batter that is too thick forms a heavy coating, while one that is too thin runs off the orange and fries unevenly. Checking that it ropes from a spoon helps the coating cling and set evenly in the hot fat.

“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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