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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple Fritters are fried apple slices coated in flour, served after dusting with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each apple into three slices and remove the cores.

  2. Peel the apples and place them in a bowl, sprinkling powdered sugar over them.

  3. Let them sit for 5-6 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until very hot.

  2. Remove the apples from the sugar, roll them in flour, and fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels before serving.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Provide the main body and moisture of the fritter, softening as they fry.
Powdered sugar
Draws moisture out of the apples and adds sweetness to their surface.
Flour
Forms a coating that fries into a crisp, golden-brown crust.
Lard
Conducts heat to cook the fritters and browns their coating.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not very hot, the coating absorbs fat before it sets, leaving fritters greasy and pale instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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