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Boiled Fritters

A batter of flour, eggs, and seasonings boiled, then fried until golden, served with fruit sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil 1 quart of water with 1 tablespoon of butter for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in enough sifted flour to thicken the mixture to the consistency of mashed potatoes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool slightly.

  4. Beat in 6 eggs, one at a time, along with salt and nutmeg.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture in hot butter or fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with fruit sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the fritters structure and richness as they set.
Sifted flour
Thickens the boiled mixture so it holds its shape when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the boiling liquid and to the frying fat.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before beating in the eggs. If the mixture is still very hot, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly, which weakens the batter's ability to set and puff when fried.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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