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German Fritters

German Fritters are fried stale bread or cake slices soaked in milk and dusted with sugar or preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

German Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut stale bread or cake into rounds.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the slices in hot lard until light brown.

  2. Dip each fried slice in boiling milk to remove grease.

  3. Drain quickly and dust with powdered sugar or spread with preserves.

  4. Pile on a hot plate and serve with sweet wine sauce if desired.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  5. Bread + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Stale bread or cake
Its dried-out crumb soaks up milk and fries to a crisp outside with a soft center.
Hot lard
Fries the slices quickly, browning the surface and adding richness.
Boiling milk
A brief dip rinses away surface grease left from frying.

The step that matters

Dip each fried slice in boiling milk. Dipping must be brief and the milk must be boiling, so the hot slice is washed of surface grease without becoming soggy and falling apart. Draining quickly keeps the fritters crisp.

“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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