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Dessert

Apple Fritters

Apple fritters are fried batter with apples, served hot 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 flour, butter, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then add to the mixture.

  3. Add milk gradually until the batter is thin.

  4. Prepare the apples and fold them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop large spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown, turning as needed.

  3. Remove and drain on blotting paper.

  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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds the fritters together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the batter.
Apples
Provide moisture, tartness, and fruity flavor inside the fritters.
Milk
Thins the flour mixture into a batter that spreads and cooks through evenly.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown, turning as needed. Fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up grease and the centre stays raw while the fritters turn heavy.

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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