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Dessert

Apple Fritters

A batter of flour, butter, eggs, milk, and apples fried in lard and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, and salt.

  2. Add the egg yolks and enough milk to create a thin batter.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  4. Prepare the apples by slicing or mincing them, then add to the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard or clarified dripping in a pan until boiling.

  2. Drop large tablespoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat and fry until light brown, turning as needed.

  3. Once cooked, place the fritters on blotting paper to absorb excess grease.

  4. Serve hot, piled high, and dusted with sifted 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once it is set by heat.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped to stiff peaks, lighten it and help it puff.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the fritter.
Apples
Provide moisture and sweet, fruity flavor within the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates it, leaving dense fritters.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, sugar. 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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