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Good Fritters

A quick fried batter made from buttermilk, flour, salt, baking soda, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Good Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 pint of buttermilk with ¼ teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

  2. Stir in enough flour to create a thick batter.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Provides acidity and moisture that hydrate the flour and give a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas, lifting the fritters and helping them brown.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, setting as it cooks in the hot fat.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Drop batter into hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the fritters brown evenly and hold their shape.

“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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