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French Batter for Frying Vegetables

A light batter made with flour, water, salt, olive oil, French brandy, and egg white for frying vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Batter for Frying Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Moisten the flour with water in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, olive oil, and French brandy; mix thoroughly.

Finish and use

  1. When ready to use, beat the egg white until frothy and fold it into the batter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Flour + olivetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + brandytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,181 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + brandytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten-based structure that gives the batter body and coating strength.
Egg white
Whipped to foam, it lightens the batter and helps it puff and crisp when fried.
Olive oil
Adds fat that tenderises the coating and helps it brown and crisp.
French brandy
Adds aroma and its alcohol evaporates quickly in hot oil, leaving a light, crisp coating.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Egg white must be beaten until frothy but folded in gently, not stirred hard. Overmixing knocks out the air bubbles that make the batter light, so the coating turns heavy instead of puffed and crisp.

“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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