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Dessert

Portuguese Fritters

Rice fritters flavored with cinnamon, lemon, and orange marmalade, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Portuguese Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Combine the cinnamon and lemon rind in a pint of milk and let it sit until slightly flavored.

  2. Pour the milk into a saucepan and add the rice, butter, and a little sugar.

  3. Simmer gently until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the milk.

  4. Pour the mixture out and beat it for 2-3 minutes, then stir in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

Shape and fry

  1. Once slightly cool, form the mixture into balls about 1½ inches in diameter, placing a small amount of orange marmalade in the center of each.

  2. Brush the balls with beaten egg and dip them in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the balls in hot fat until lightly browned.

  4. Drain the fritters.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin dusted with sugar.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Starch that softens and thickens with milk, giving the fritters a creamy, tender interior.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the cooked rice so the balls hold their shape.
Milk
Liquid that cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a soft, creamy texture.
Fresh butter
Fat that adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the rice mixture.
Bread crumbs
Coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat, adding a crunchy outer layer.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice until tender and fully absorbed. Rice must cook long enough to soften and absorb the milk; undercooked grains stay firm and the mixture will not bind well into balls.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, lemon, milk, rice, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, lemon, milk, rice, butter, sugar, egg. 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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