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Frying Batter

A thick batter made with flour, salt, pepper, egg yolk, salad oil, cold water, and folded egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Frying Batter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the egg yolk and salad oil.

  3. Gradually mix in cold water until you achieve a thick batter.

  4. In a separate bowl, whip the egg white until stiff peaks form, then gently 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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that coats and crisps during frying.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds lightness and air to the batter.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour to form a thick, coating batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Whipped whites hold air that gives the batter lift. Stirring vigorously instead of folding gently deflates the foam, leaving a dense coating.

“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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