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Dessert

Queen Fritters

A fried batter of butter, water, flour, eggs, filled with preserves or fresh fruit and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Queen Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and pour in the boiling water.

  2. Once the water is boiling, add the flour all at once and stir until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the saucepan.

  3. Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

Fry and fill

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot oil and fry until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fritters, make an opening, and fill with preserves or fresh fruits.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Melts into the boiling water to add richness and tenderness to the dough.
Flour
Its starch gelatinises with the hot water and sets with the eggs to give the dough structure.
Eggs
Add structure and help the fritters puff and set as they cook.
Preserves or fresh fruits
Add moisture and sweetness to the filling inside the fried shell.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully beaten into the dough before the next is added. Eggs that are added too quickly can break the emulsion, leaving a loose, greasy batter that will not hold its shape or puff well when fried.

“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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