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Cauliflower Fritters

A fried cake made from boiled cauliflower, butter, egg, milk, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cauliflower Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and mash the cauliflower with a fork.

  3. Add butter and form the mixture into small flat cakes.

Batter and fry

  1. Let the cakes cool, then dip them in a batter made of beaten egg, salt, milk, and flour.

  2. Fry the fritters in hot butter or salt-pork drippings until light brown.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the fritters and gives them their soft, moist interior.
Egg
Binds the batter so it coats the cakes and holds together in the frying fat.
Flour
Thickens the batter slightly so it clings to the cauliflower cakes.
Milk
Loosens the egg and flour into a batter with a smooth, coating consistency.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside of the fritters brown when fried.

The step that matters

Let the cakes cool before battering. Cooling lets the mashed cauliflower firm up so the batter stays on the cakes instead of sliding off or softening in the hot fat.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, milk, 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.

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