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Dessert

Apple Fritters

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, apples, and lemon, fried or baked into golden fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Stir in salt, sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, milk, chopped apples, and flour until well combined.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Alternatively, bake on a griddle like pancakes.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Beaten eggs add structure and lift to the batter, holding the fritters together.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and set it during cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads and cooks through.
Chopped apples
Supply fruit flavour and moisture, softening slightly as the fritters cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it fries.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. The batter needs enough heat to set and brown on the outside before the centre cooks through. Too low a heat leaves fritters greasy and pale, while too high a heat scorches the surface before the inside is set.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, milk, 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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