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Dessert

Nut Fritters

Nut fritters are a batter of bread crumbs, spices, bitter almond essence, egg whites, arrowroot, sugar, and nuts, fried into balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nut Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, mace or nutmeg, and bitter almond essence.

  2. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until light, then mix in the arrowroot and sugar.

  3. Fold the egg mixture into the crumb mixture until a stiff paste forms.

  4. Stir in the chopped nuts and refrigerate for 10 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Shape the mixture into balls, coat with Fritter Batter No. 2, and fry until golden.

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. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Arrowroot + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 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. Bread + arrowroottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 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

Egg whites
Whipped to air, they lighten the paste and help bind the crumbs into a shapeable mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the fritter and give it a body that holds its shape.
Arrowroot
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and helps the paste hold together.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and nutty flavor, giving the fritter texture and richness.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the crumb mixture. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser fritter that may not hold its shape well in the fryer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, almond, egg, arrowroot, sugar, nuts):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, almond, egg, arrowroot, sugar, nuts. 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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