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Vegetable Fritters

Fried vegetable cakes made with egg, flour, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mash the cold vegetables, removing any hard bits of stalk.

  2. Whisk the egg and mix it with the mashed vegetables, butter, flour, and enough milk to form a smooth mixture.

  3. Shape the mixture into small flat cakes or rolls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cake or roll into a batter made of flour and water, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in clarified fat until crispy and golden.

  3. Serve as a side with meat or as a vegetable course.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Binds the mashed vegetables together so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps the cakes hold together while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the mixture, improving flavour and tenderness.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in clarified fat. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the fritters absorb grease and turn soggy before the coating sets. Clarified fat also tolerates higher heat without burning.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, butter, flour, milk, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, flour, milk, bread. 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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