Why it works: Sugar and cashew nut work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 292 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Cachew Nut Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
In a copper kettle, combine glucose, sugar, grease, and water.
Set on the furnace and mix with a paddle.
When the mixture starts to boil, insert a thermometer and cook to 280°F (138°C).
Cook the nuts
Once it reaches 280°F, remove the thermometer and add cashew nuts and salt.
Stir gently to prevent breaking the nuts and cook for 5 minutes until the nuts seem to slip from the paddle.
Shape and finish
Dump the mixture onto a well-greased slab and turn it over for a few minutes.
Once the sugar and nuts are thoroughly mixed, shape them into fritters like pecan fritters.
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.
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Sugar + cashew nuttop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together292 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cashew nuts
- Form the main body of the fritters and provide the crunchy texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and, once cooked, sets into a crisp, brittle coating.
- Glucose
- Helps prevent crystallization so the cooked sugar stays smooth and glossy.
- Grease
- Adds fat for a tender bite and helps the mixture release from the slab.
The step that matters
Stir gently when the nuts go in. Vigorous stirring at this hot, sugar-rich stage can break the nuts and cloud the coating, so the nuts should be folded in gently until the mixture loses its gloss and clings to the paddle.
“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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