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Sweet Potato Fritters

Fried sweet potato slices coated in batter, served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 314 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes into pieces half an inch thick and one inch wide.

  2. In an earthen bowl, moisten the sweet potatoes with brandy and add the lemon peel.

  3. Allow the mixture to macerate for 30 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Drain the sweet potatoes, dip them in batter, and fry in hot lard until browned.

  2. Drain the fritters and serve on a napkin, sprinkling powdered sugar over them.

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. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sweet potato + brandytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the fritter, becoming soft and tender inside while the batter crisps outside.
Brandy
Moistens the sweet potato slices and adds an aromatic, alcoholic flavour during maceration.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma that complements the sweet potatoes.
Batter
Coats the slices and fries to a crisp, golden-brown shell.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the batter a rich, browned crust.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until browned. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping quickly. Frying at a steady high heat seals the coating and keeps the fritters from becoming oily.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, brandy, sugar. 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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