Skip to main content
Main

Peanut Fruit

A fried ball made of milk, peanuts, celery, raisins, marjoram, breadcrumbs, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Peanut Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the peanut mixture

  1. Boil 2 cups of milk and add 2 cups of ground raw peanuts.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of finely chopped celery, ½ cup of seeded raisins or figs, 1 teaspoon of sweet marjoram, 2 teaspoons of oil, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of bread crumbs, and 2 beaten eggs.

  3. Mix well and shape into small balls.

Batter and fry

  1. For the batter, mix 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 egg, a pinch of salt, and 1 cup of milk.

  2. Dip the peanut balls into the batter.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without dressing. Mashed potatoes or Lyonnaise go best with this dish.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Celery + marjoramtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peanut + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground raw peanuts
Form the bulk of the balls and give them their nutty flavour and body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape while cooking.
Milk
Moistens the peanuts so they form a soft, cohesive mixture.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the balls and helps them brown when fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the balls hold together.

The step that matters

Frying the coated balls in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Too hot and the outside browns before the centre heats through.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes