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Potato Fritters

A fried batter of boiled potatoes, eggs, cream, raisins, lemon juice, nutmeg, and lard served with a sweetened lemon sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

4 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Beat the boiled potatoes lightly with a fork, avoiding a spoon.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well, leaving out one of the whites.

  2. Add the cream, raisins (or sweet wine), lemon juice, grated nutmeg, and hot lard to the eggs, and beat all together for at least 20 minutes, or until the batter is extremely light.

Fry and serve

  1. Put plenty of good lard into a frying pan.

  2. Drop a tablespoonful of the batter at a time into the pan, and fry the fritters until a nice brown.

  3. Drain the fritters on a piece of blotting paper before serving.

  4. Dish the fritters neatly on a white d'oyley, sprinkle pounded sugar over them.

  5. Prepare the sauce: mix a glass of sherry with the strained juice of a lemon and sufficient white sugar to sweeten.

  6. Warm the sauce ingredients, and serve the sauce separately in a tureen.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

387Calories
12 gProtein
12 gFat
61 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Raisin1 small box (28g)85
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Nutmeg + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and, when beaten well, trap air that lightens the fritters.
Potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the batter once boiled and mashed.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender interior.
Lard (in the method)
Fat for frying that browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Beating the batter for at least 20 minutes. Long beating incorporates air into the eggs, which lifts the batter and makes the fritters light. Stopping early leaves them dense and heavy.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, nutmeg, potato, egg, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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