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Dessert

Beetroot Fritters

A fried dessert made from cooked beetroot, egg yolks, flour, lemon rind, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beetroot Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the beetroot mixture

  1. Pass the cooked beetroots through a fine sieve.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour.

  3. Add the egg yolks, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

  5. Stir the mixture over low heat for 10 minutes.

  6. Set aside to cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop dessert spoonfuls of the mixture into the frying batter.

  2. Drain slightly.

  3. Fry in hot fat until crisp and lightly browned.

  4. Drain well.

  5. Serve dusted with caster 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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Beetroot + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beetroot + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked beetroots
Provide the main body and colour of the fritter mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set when stirred with heat.
Flour
Thickens the beetroot purée so it holds its shape when fried.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over low heat for 10 minutes. Gentle heat thickens the egg yolks and flour without scrambling the yolks. If the heat is too high, the eggs can curdle and the mixture becomes grainy, so the cooled mixture may not hold together in the hot fat.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, egg, flour, sugar, nutmeg. 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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