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Celery Fritters

Celery fritters are boiled celery pieces coated in a batter of egg, flour, and spices, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Boil the celery pieces in salted water until tender.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk, salad oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg, flour, and enough cold water to create a stiff batter.

  2. Just before frying, fold in the beaten egg white.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat oil in a pan until smoking hot.

  2. Dip the boiled celery in the batter and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove fritters and place on brown paper to drain excess grease, then sprinkle lightly with salt.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Becomes the tender filling inside each fritter after boiling.
All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff batter that coats the celery and sets when fried.
Egg white
Beaten to stiff froth, it lightens the batter so the coating stays airy.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the batter, contributing tenderness and richness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white just before frying. Stiffly beaten egg white traps air that expands in hot oil. If it sits too long in the batter, it deflates and the coating turns dense rather than light.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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