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Dessert

Currant Jelly Fritters

Fritters made from loaf cake slices filled with currant jelly, dipped in batter, fried, and rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Currant Jelly Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sandwiches

  1. Cut the loaf cake into very thin slices.

  2. Stamp out small rounds or squares from the slices.

  3. Spread currant jelly on half of the pieces. Sandwich the jelly-covered pieces together.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 eggs, 1 cup of water, ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, 1 cup of flour, and 1 tablespoon of melted butter to prepare the fritter batter.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff. Fold the stiff egg whites into the batter.

  3. Set the batter aside for a few hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the sandwiches in the batter. Lift them out carefully.

  2. Immerse them in smoking hot fat. Fry until brown.

  3. Drain on coarse paper. Roll in powdered sugar.

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 + buttertop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and a light, airy texture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter that coats and sets around the sandwiches.
Melted butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and a fruity filling that softens the loaf cake inside.
Plain loaf cake
Forms the soft, absorbent base that holds the jelly between its slices.

The step that matters

Fry in smoking hot fat. Hot fat sets the batter's crust quickly so it browns and seals before the jelly melts out. If the fat is not hot enough, the fritters absorb oil and turn greasy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, 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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