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Dessert

Jolly Boys Fritters

A thick batter of rye, wheat, cornmeal, sugar, cinnamon, salt, eggs, molasses, and water is fried into fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jolly Boys Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix rye meal, whole-wheat flour, corn meal, sugar, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Add beaten eggs and molasses, then enough cold water to make a very thick batter.

  3. Beat the mixture well and let it sit for at least 1 hour.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a kettle of hot oil.

  2. Fry until browned on both sides, then remove with a skimmer and serve hot.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Wheat + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Rye + corntop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set and hold their shape while frying.
Rye meal
Provides the main body and a hearty, earthy flavour to the batter.
Whole-wheat flour
Adds structure and a nutty, wholesome flavour to the batter.
Corn meal
Adds a slightly gritty texture and helps the fritters crisp at the edges.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and helps the fritters brown.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a kettle of hot oil.. The batter is very thick, so it must go into hot oil in spoonfuls rather than poured. Hot oil sets the outside quickly so the fritters hold their shape and brown evenly instead of absorbing grease and falling apart.

“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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