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Dessert

Jelly Fritters

A batter of soaked sponge cake crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, corn starch, and currant jelly, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Jelly Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the cake crumbs in the boiling milk.

  2. Stir in the corn-starch.

  3. Heat the mixture until boiling, stirring constantly.

  4. Beat the yolks until light.

  5. Add the beaten yolks to the mixture as it cools, along with the sugar.

  6. Whip in the jelly gradually.

  7. Fold in the egg whites beaten to a stiff froth.

Fry

  1. Fry immediately.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten to a stiff froth, lighten it so the fritters stay tender.
Sponge cake crumbs
Provide the base structure that soaks up the boiling milk and thickens into the batter.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the batter body.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness, fruity flavour and some moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites beaten to a stiff froth. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that gives lift. Folding gently rather than stirring keeps that air in the batter, so the fritters stay light instead of dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, corn. 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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