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Mincemeat Fritters

Mincemeat fritters are small fried cakes made with mincemeat, eggs, flour, lemon juice, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour 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 ↓

Mincemeat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs and beat them well.

  2. Moisten the flour with the egg yolks until smooth.

  3. Add the mincemeat and part of the lemon juice to the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Drop small spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard.

  3. Fry for 6 to 7 minutes until golden brown.

  4. Remove fritters and place them on paper to drain.

  5. Serve hot on a napkin.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks bind the batter and whites are used to add lightness to the fritters.
Flour
Starch gives the batter body so the fritters hold their shape while frying.
Mincemeat
Provides the sweet, spiced fruit filling that flavours each fritter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet mincemeat flavour.
Lard
Fat conducts heat for frying and gives the outside a golden, crisp browning.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. Lard must be very hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, so the fritters do not soak up grease and turn heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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