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Dessert

Bunuelos

A fried batter fritter made from flour, milk, egg, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bunuelos

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together.

  2. Sift the dry mixture.

  3. Beat the egg.

  4. Mix the beaten egg with the milk.

  5. Beat the mixture again.

  6. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients.

  7. Stir thoroughly.

  8. The batter should be as thick as thick pancake batter.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan for frying.

  2. Dip a mold into the batter to cover the bottom.

  3. Shake the mold gently in the hot lard until the bunaelo floats away.

  4. Fry until golden brown.

  5. Remove with a fork.

  6. Repeat until all the batter is used.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as it sets in the hot lard.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid body and softness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritter puffs and turns light.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Frying temperature and batter thickness. The batter must be thick enough to cling to the mold, and the lard must be hot enough to set and brown the outside quickly. If the lard is too cool, the fritters absorb fat and turn greasy; if the batter is too thin, it will not hold its shape.

“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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