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Dessert

Queen Fritters

A fried batter fritter filled with jelly or fruit and dusted with powdered 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. Boil water in a saucepan and add butter.

  2. Once boiling, add flour all at once and stir quickly until the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan.

  3. Remove from heat and chill the mixture.

  4. Add unbeaten eggs one at a time, beating until smooth after each addition.

Fry and fill

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into fat heated to 355°F (180°C), which browns a cube of bread in 70 seconds.

  2. Cook until very light and then drain.

  3. Make an opening in the side of each fritter and fill with jelly or fruit, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  4. Serve on a folded napkin.

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the paste so the fritters puff and hold their shape.
Eggs
Add moisture and set during frying, giving the fritters their light, hollow texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the boiling water, softening the dough and adding flavour.
Boiling water
Melts the butter and gelatinises the flour on contact, forming a smooth, workable paste.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully beaten in before the next goes in, so the paste becomes smooth and emulsified. Adding eggs too fast or while the paste is too hot can curdle it or cause it to lose its structure, leaving dense fritters.

“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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