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Ham Fritters

A fried dish of ham balls coated in a batter of flour, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ham Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham mixture

  1. Heat the stock to boiling point.

  2. Thicken the stock with the flour and butter cooked together.

  3. Add the chopped ham, beaten egg, dry mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Heat the mixture thoroughly.

  5. Cool the mixture.

Batter and fry

  1. Make fritter batter by mixing sifted flour, melted butter, hot water, beaten egg white, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Shape the ham mixture into small balls.

  3. Dip the balls in the fritter batter.

  4. Fry the battered balls in deep fat.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Beaten egg binds the ham mixture, while the egg white in the batter helps the coating set and puff.
Flour
Cooked with butter to thicken the stock, and sifted into the batter to form its coating structure.
Butter
Cooked with flour to form a roux that thickens the stock, and melted into the batter for richness.
Ham
Main flavouring and body of the filling, giving the fritters their savoury taste.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose ham mixture will not hold its shape when formed into balls and may break apart in the hot fat. Cooling lets the thickened mixture firm up so the balls keep their form while frying.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, ham, egg, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, ham, egg, sauce. 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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