Skip to main content
Dessert

Venetian Fritters

A fried dough made from rice, milk, sugar, butter, lemon rind, currants, apples, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Venetian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Wash and dry the rice.

  2. Add the rice to a pot with the cold milk.

  3. Simmer the rice and milk slowly, stirring frequently until thick and dry.

  4. Stir in the sugar, butter, salt, and lemon rind.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Add the currants, chopped apples, flour, and beaten eggs. Mix well.

  2. Drop spoonfuls into deep hot fat.

  3. Fry quickly until golden brown.

  4. Serve with sugar sprinkled on top.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the fritter mixture body and a soft, creamy interior.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set the fritters as they fry.
Flour
Adds more body to the batter so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the fat.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a thick, creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness that contrasts with the rich base.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice and milk until thick and dry. Rice must cook long enough in the milk to soften and thicken the base. If the mixture is still loose, the added eggs and flour will not bind, and the spoonfuls may spread or fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, butter, lemon, apple, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, butter, lemon, apple, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes