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Dessert

Italian Fritters

Bread slices fried and topped with apricot jam and wine sauce, garnished with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Italian Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into slices ¼ inch thick, then into rounds.

Fry

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Fry the bread until golden brown.

Glaze and serve

  1. Arrange the fried bread in a circle on a plate.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the jam and wine, and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the fritters.

  4. Sprinkle finely chopped almonds on top.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Wine + apricottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Provide the bread base that fries to a golden, crisp exterior while staying soft inside.
Butter
Fat for frying, which browns the bread and adds rich flavor.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor, and its glaze gives the fritters a glossy finish.
Wine
Thins the jam into a pourable glaze and adds acidity and depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavor and a crisp crust. Too little heat leaves the bread pale and greasy; too much burns the outside before the inside is warm.

“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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