Skip to main content
Main

Indian Fritters

A batter of Indian meal, flour, eggs, sour milk, salt, and baking soda cooked into fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Indian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the Indian meal, flour, eggs, sour milk, salt, and baking soda until combined.

Cook the fritters

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and pour the batter to form fritters.

  2. Cook until golden brown on both sides, similar to buckwheat cakes.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Indian meal
Forms the main body of the fritters, giving them their coarse, hearty texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help hold the fritters together as they cook.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lighten the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that helps the fritters rise.
Flour
Adds structure and body to the batter so the fritters hold their shape.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the centre cook through before the outside browns. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the surface, so flipping only once the underside is set helps prevent tearing and uneven cooking.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes