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Cold Meat Fritters

Fried slices of cold meat coated in batter, seasoned with onion, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Meat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay slices of cold meat on a dish.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped onion, lemon juice, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Let it stand for 1 hour.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the sliced meat in batter.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden.

  3. Drain and serve garnished with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of each fritter, giving the bite and filling.
Batter
Coats the meat and crisps in hot fat to form a golden, crunchy shell.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and moisture that flavors the meat during its hour of standing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the meat and herbs.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping quickly. Hot fat sets the batter's crust fast, sealing in the meat's moisture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lemon, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lemon, parsley, pepper. 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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