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Spinach Fritters

Spinach fritters made with boiled spinach, grated bread, spices, cream or eggs, currants, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spinach Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mince the boiled spinach and combine it with grated bread, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon.

  2. Add enough cream or beaten eggs to achieve a batter-like consistency.

  3. Scald the currants and mix them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a frying pan with boiling lard.

  2. Fry until the fritters rise, then remove and drain them.

  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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Spinach + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main body and green flavour of the fritters.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps the batter hold together while frying.
Cream or eggs
Bind the mixture and give it a batter-like consistency.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit through the batter.

The step that matters

Fry until the fritters rise. The lard must be boiling hot when the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the fritters puff and do not absorb excess grease or turn heavy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, bread, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cream):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, bread, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cream. 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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