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Batter for Fruit Fritters

A batter of flour, eggs, olive oil, brandy, and cold water is folded with beaten egg whites and used to coat fruit before frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Batter for Fruit Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the flour.

  2. Add the olive oil and brandy (or substitute with wine or lemon juice).

  3. Thin the mixture with cold water until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Fry

  1. Dip the fruit into the batter and fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Flour + olivetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + brandytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,181 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + brandytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 batter that coats the fruit and crisps when fried.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it so the fritters puff.
Olive oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter tender and helps it brown.
Brandy or rum
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol evaporates quickly, helping the batter crisp.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites gently into the batter. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that makes the fritters light. Deflating them by stirring vigorously loses that air, 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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