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Dessert

Cheese Fritters

Cheese fritters are small fried cakes made from a batter of butter, flour, water, eggs, cheese, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cheese Fritters

Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux paste

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook until it leaves the sides of the pan clean, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the grated cheese, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Dip two teaspoons in hot water and shape the fritters with them.

  2. Drop the fritters into boiling fat and fry until pale brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the paste so the fritters hold their shape when fried.
Flour
Forms the starch base of the paste that gives the fritters their body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the paste and helps it stay tender.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and some fat, and browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter and water. Cooking the flour until it leaves the pan sides drives off moisture and gelatinises the starch, giving a paste firm enough to hold its shape. Undercooked paste stays soft and may spread or collapse 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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