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Chicken Fritters

Chicken fritters made by coating pieces of boiled or roasted chicken in a batter and deep frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Chicken Fritters

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into small pieces.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Prepare the batter as for 'Batter Fritters', omitting the sugar.

Fry and serve

  1. Stir the chicken into the batter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls into very hot fat.

  3. Drain and serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cold boiled or roast chicken
Provides the main filling and protein of the fritters.
Batter
Coats the chicken and forms a crisp, golden shell when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the chicken.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into very hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil instead of setting quickly, giving greasy, heavy fritters. Very hot fat sets the batter fast so the outside crisps while the inside heats through.

“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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