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Dessert

The Bunuelos Mould

Bunuelos are Spanish fritters made from a batter of flour, milk, egg, sugar, salt, baking powder, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The Bunuelos Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together and sift.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk; beat again.

  3. Add the egg and milk mixture to the dry ingredients and stir thoroughly.

  4. The batter should be as thick as thick pancake batter.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Dip the mould into the batter to cover the bottom, then shake it gently in the lard until the bunuelos float away.

  3. Cook until golden brown, then remove with a fork.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 structure of the batter that holds the fritter together while frying.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets in the hot fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters puff and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid body and tender texture.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the outside a crisp, golden browning.

The step that matters

Dip the mould into the batter to cover the bottom, then shake it gently in the lard. Batter that is too thin or shaken too roughly will break up or spread in the fat, while the right thickness lets the fritter set into a single piece.

“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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