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Delicious Plain Fritters

A simple batter of flour, eggs, and water fried into golden fritters and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Delicious Plain Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift flour and salt into a bowl.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs slightly.

  3. Add cold water gradually, beating until light and foamy.

  4. Slowly add the liquid to the flour mixture, stirring constantly until smooth.

  5. Mix in baking powder.

  6. Mix in beaten egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls in hot oil until rich brown.

  2. Drain and dust with sugar.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 once mixed with liquid.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites lighten it for a tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters rise and puff while frying.
Cold water
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms a thin batter.

The step that matters

Fry spoonfuls in hot oil until rich brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the fritters absorb excess oil and turn greasy instead of crisp and browned. Oil that is too hot browns the outside before the inside cooks through.

“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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