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Dessert

French Fritters

A sweet batter of eggs, flour, milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, and citron, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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French Fritters

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

French Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl.

  2. Add the flour.

  3. Work in the milk and salt until well combined.

  4. Add the cinnamon, lemon peel, and minced citron, mixing well.

Cook and cut

  1. Grease a saucepan with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the saucepan.

  3. Cook until firm.

  4. Remove and cut into pieces 3-4 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  5. Notch the ends of each piece.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the pieces until golden brown.

  2. Serve with sifted loaf sugar sprinkled on top.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Bind the batter and set into a firm structure when cooked.
Flour
Provides body so the mixture holds its shape when cut and fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it combines smoothly.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oil that flavours the batter.

The step that matters

Fry the pieces until golden brown. Frying at a steady heat browns the surface through Maillard reactions while the interior stays cooked. Too little heat leaves the fritters greasy and pale; too much burns the outside before the centre is hot.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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