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Dessert

Lemon Fritters

A fried batter of suet, breadcrumbs, sugar, flour, eggs, lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lemon Fritters

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped suet with bread-crumbs, sugar, flour, whisked eggs, lemon rind, cream, and lemon juice. Mix well until combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter in a pan and fry spoonfuls of the mixture for five minutes until golden.

  2. Serve very hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help hold the fritters together.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the fritters moist.
Bread-crumbs
Form the body of the batter and give the fritters structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls. The batter is soft and loosely bound, so it can break apart or burn on the outside if the pan is too hot or the fritters are turned too early. Frying at a steady heat lets the centre set while the outside turns golden.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, beef, sugar, flour, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, sugar, flour, egg, cream. 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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