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Venetian Fritters

A fried batter of rice, milk, butter, sugar, lemon rind, currants, apple, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Venetian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Wash, pick, and dry the rice, then place it in a saucepan with the milk and butter.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the milk.

  3. Beat in the powdered sugar and salt, then let the mixture cool.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the grated lemon rind, currants, chopped apple, flour, and beaten eggs to the cooled mixture.

  2. Keep the mixture in a cool place until ready to fry.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat and fry over gentle heat until lightly browned, about 5 to 6 minutes.

  2. Turn them carefully to brown the other side, then drain and serve on a hot dish with powdered sugar sifted over them.

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

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Cooked until tender and absorbed into the milk, it gives the fritters their body and soft interior.
Eggs
Bind the cooked rice and fruit together and help set the fritters as they fry.
New milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a creamy texture to the mixture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the fritters.
Apple
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, and softens as the fritters cook.

The step that matters

Frying over gentle heat. Gentle heat lets the centre cook through while the outside turns golden. Fry too hot and the surface browns or burns before the batter-like interior sets.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, walnut, butter, sugar, lemon, apple. 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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