Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Currant Oe Rit Ters
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.
Mix in the butter and let it cool.
Beat in the egg yolks, powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour.
Fold in the stiff egg whites and currants coated with flour. The batter should be thick.
Fry and serve
Drop spoonfuls into hot lard and fry until golden.
Drain and serve hot, dusted with a mixture of wine and powdered sugar.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,341 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar and cinnamon 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
- Bread crumbs
- Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the batter.
- Eggs
- Whipped whites give lift and airiness, while the yolks enrich and bind the batter.
- Currants
- Add tart, chewy bursts of fruit throughout the fritters.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a soft, tender crumb.
- Flour
- Helps the coated currants stay suspended and gives the batter structure.
The step that matters
Folding in the stiff egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are whipped stiff and folded gently; overmixing deflates them and the fritters turn dense. Currants dusted with flour are less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, milk, egg, sugar, butter, cinnamon):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, milk, egg, sugar, butter, cinnamon. 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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