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Batter for Fish, Meat, Fritters, &C.

A batter made with flour, salt, oil, beer or wine, and egg whites for frying fish, meat, and fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Batter for Fish, Meat, Fritters, &C.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and salt.

  2. Add oil, beer (or wine), and beaten egg whites.

  3. Mix until the batter is the thickness of a nutmeg.

Fry

  1. Heat oil or hog's lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry until golden.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beer + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together464 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Fine flour
Forms the structure of the batter and sets as it cooks into a crisp coating.
Egg whites
Whipped air and protein add lightness and help the fritters puff and set.
Oil
Adds fat that gives the batter tenderness and helps it brown in the pan.
Beer or white wine
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter's texture.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. The batter must go into hot oil so its surface sets quickly into a crisp crust. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs more oil and becomes greasy.

“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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