Skip to main content
Dessert

Common Fritters

Apple fritters made by battering sliced apples and frying them, served hot with sugar and wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare the apples and remove the cores with an apple corer.

  2. Cut the apples into round slices.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the ale, eggs, and enough flour to create a batter thicker than a common pudding.

  2. Add nutmeg and sugar to taste.

  3. Let the batter sit for 3-4 minutes to rise.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the apple slices into the batter.

  2. Fry them in hot lard or dripping until crisp.

  3. Serve the fritters hot, sprinkled with sugar and accompanied by wine sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 help it set and crisp around the apple slices.
Flour
Thickens the ale and eggs into a batter that coats the apple slices.
Ale
Thins the batter and its carbonation helps it puff and turn light when fried.
Baking apples
Provide the fruit base; their firm flesh holds its shape during frying.
Lard or dripping
Hot fat fries the batter quickly, browning it and making it crisp.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Hot fat sets the batter quickly, so it browns and seals before the apple softens.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, nutmeg, sugar, wine, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, nutmeg, sugar, wine, sauce. 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.

More apple fritters recipes

Potato 3 See all 377 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes