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Celery Fritters

A fried dish of boiled celery pieces coated in a stiff batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into 2‑inch pieces and boil in salted water until tender.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk, salad oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg, flour, and enough cold water to create a stiff batter.

  2. Just before frying, fold in the beaten egg white until frothy.

Fry and drain

  1. Dip the boiled celery pieces in the batter and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Remove fritters and place on brown paper to drain excess grease, then sprinkle lightly with salt.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 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

Celery
Forms the tender filling inside the crisp batter coating.
All-purpose flour
Builds the stiff batter that coats and holds the celery during frying.
Raw egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Raw egg white
Whipped in lightly at the end to add air and a frothy, lighter texture.
Salad oil
Carries heat into the batter and helps it fry to golden brown.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white just before frying. Beaten egg white traps air that expands in hot oil and keeps the batter light. If it sits too long, the foam collapses and the fritters turn heavy and dense.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, nutmeg, 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.

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