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Dessert

Orange Fritters

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, and salt is used to coat orange sections, which are fried and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,456 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, flour, and salt until smooth.

  2. Peel and seed the oranges, then separate them into sections.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each orange section into the batter.

  2. Heat oil in a deep pan and fry the battered orange sections until golden.

  3. Serve the fritters dusted with powdered 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. Orange + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,828 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm coating around the oranges.
All-purpose flour
Forms the base of the batter and gives the coating its structure as it fries.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it coat the orange sections evenly.
Oranges
Provide the main flavor and juicy filling inside the crisp batter coating.

The step that matters

Frying the battered sections. Oil must be hot enough that the batter sets and turns golden quickly; if the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs more oil and becomes greasy and heavy.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, olive, 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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