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Dessert

To Make Plum Fritters with Rice

A sweet fritter made from penny loaf crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

To Make Plum Fritters with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the crumb of the penny loaf and pour boiling cream or milk over it.

  2. Let it stand for 4 to 5 hours, then beat it until very fine.

Mix and fry

  1. Add the egg yolks, sugar, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  2. Fry the mixture in hog's lard until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Drain on a sieve and serve with wine sauce.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Penny loaf crumb
Forms the soft body of the fritters by soaking up the hot cream or milk.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture so it holds together when fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown during frying.
Hog's lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Beating the soaked crumb until very fine. If the crumb is left in coarse pieces, the fritters will not form a smooth, cohesive batter and may break apart in the hot fat. Fine beating gives an even texture throughout.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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