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Vegetable Fritters

Vegetable fritters made from mashed vegetables, egg, butter, flour, milk, bread crumbs, and fried in clarified dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 create a smooth mixture.

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

Coat and fry

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

  2. Fry in clarified dripping until crispy.

Serve

  1. Serve as a vegetable 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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
Bind the mashed vegetables so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps it hold together while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the vegetable mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Forming and coating the cakes. If the mixture is too wet or the cakes are loosely coated, they can break apart in the hot fat. Making the mixture smooth and coating each piece fully helps the crumbs stick and the crust stay intact while frying.

“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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