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Sage and Onion Fritters

Sage and onion fritters are small flat cakes made from minced onions, chopped sage, bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sage and Onion Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine minced onions, chopped sage, bread crumbs, beaten eggs, salt, and pepper. Mix thoroughly until well blended.

  2. Form the mixture into small flat cakes.

Fry

  1. Coat each cake in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling oil for 8 minutes until golden brown.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide bulk and a savoury, sweet flavour that carries the fritter.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the cakes body and a crisp golden coating.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the coating set when fried.
Sage
Adds a warm, aromatic herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling oil. The oil must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb oil, turn greasy, and the egg and crumb coating may not set properly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, bread, egg, 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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