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Indian Fritters

A fried batter of flour, water, eggs, and lard, served with preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Indian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Put the flour into a bowl and pour the boiling water over it to make a stiff paste.

  2. Stir and beat well to prevent lumps.

  3. Let the mixture rest for a moment.

  4. Add the egg yolks and egg whites, stirring and beating until combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard or clarified dripping in a pan.

  2. Drop a dessertspoonful of the mixture into the hot fat at a time and fry until light brown, allowing them to rise like balls.

  3. Serve on a dish with a spoonful of preserve or marmalade between each fritter.

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).

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 stiff paste that gives the fritters their body and structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while enriching its texture.
Egg whites
Whipped air and protein help the fritters puff and rise in the hot fat.
Hot lard or clarified dripping
Conducts heat quickly to cook the batter and brown the outside.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of setting and rising into light balls. Frying in small spoonfuls keeps the temperature steady.

“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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