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Plain Nuts

Fried balls made from ground peanuts, breadcrumbs, eggs, and milk, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Plain Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine ground peanuts, bread crumbs, eggs, and milk. Season with salt to taste.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot oil.

  2. Fry until browned.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Peanut + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground peanuts
Provide the main flavor and nutty aroma of the balls.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture body so the balls hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set when heated.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mixture is soft enough to shape and stays tender inside.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the balls absorb excess oil and turn greasy and loose. Hot oil sets the outside quickly so the balls keep their shape and brown evenly.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk. 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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