Skip to main content
Dessert

Venetian Fritters

Rice fritters made with boiled rice, apple, currants, and a batter of milk, flour, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Venetian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the rice in milk until tender and the milk is absorbed.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter, sugar, flour, and egg yolks.

  3. Return to heat until hot.

  4. Add the peeled, cored, and minced apple and the washed currants.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop by tablespoons into deep, hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the fritter and gives it a soft, tender body.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set with structure when heated.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Apple
Adds moisture, tartness, and fruity flavour to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lighten the fritters as they cook.

The step that matters

Frying in deep, hot lard. If the fat is not hot enough, the fritters absorb oil and turn greasy before the outside browns. Hot fat sets the surface quickly, forming a crisp golden crust that holds the soft filling inside.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes