Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried apple slices coated in a wheatmeal batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples, then slice them into 1‑inch thick rounds.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, make a batter with the milk, wheatmeal, and beaten eggs, adding sugar to taste.

  2. Heat oil or butter in a frying pan until boiling.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the apple slices into the batter and fry until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fritters on paper towels and keep them warm in the oven until all are cooked.

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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Provide the fruit that is coated in batter and fried into the fritter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown during frying.
Allinson fine wheatmeal
Forms the body of the batter, giving the coating structure once fried.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs into a batter and adds moisture and browning.

The step that matters

Frying the coated apple slices. The fat must be hot enough before the battered apple goes in; if it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping and browning quickly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

More apple fritters recipes

You might also like