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Dessert

White Fritters

Rice fritters made from rice, milk, ginger, candied lemon peel, fried and served with sugar and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

White Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice and dry it by the fire.

  2. Beat the rice very fine in a mortar, then sift it through a fine sieve.

Make the paste

  1. Put the rice into a saucepan and moisten it with milk, adding another pint.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens to a fine paste.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll it out with a rolling pin and cut into small pieces.

  2. Flour your hands and shape the fritters, ensuring they do not stick together.

  3. Fry the fritters in hot oil until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Sprinkle sugar over the fritters.

  2. Pour orange flower water on top before serving.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the thick base of the batter, setting into a firm paste when cooked and cooled.
Milk
Moistens the rice and cooks it into a smooth, thickened paste.
Candied lemon peel
Adds concentrated citrus aroma and a little sweetness to the paste.

The step that matters

Cook the paste until thick, stirring constantly. Starch in the rice gelatinises as it heats with the milk and must be stirred to prevent scorching on the base. Cooking it fully thickens it so the cooled paste holds its shape and does not fall apart or stick when fried.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, ginger, lemon, flour, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, ginger, lemon, flour, 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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