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Dessert

Apple or Any Fruit Fritters

A batter of flour, oil, egg, water, and optional brandy is mixed, beaten, folded with egg white, then fruit slices are fried.

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 or Any Fruit Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, salad oil, egg, water, and brandy until smooth.

  2. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Set the batter aside, then fold in the beaten egg white.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the sliced fruit into the batter and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Flour + brandytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,181 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the starch that sets the batter into a light, coating structure when fried.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter, helping it cling to the fruit and set as it cooks.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter tender and helps it brown evenly in the frying oil.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter soaks up oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot oil sets the outside quickly, so the fritter browns and stays light inside.

“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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