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Dessert

Spanish Fritters

A sweet fried batter made from rice flour, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and macaroons, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine rice flour, salt, lemon rind, milk, sugar, and crushed macaroons.

  2. Heat the mixture on the stove until warm, then add the eggs and remove from heat to cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the batter into balls, coat them in bread crumbs, and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Dust with sugar before serving.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Provides the starchy body that thickens the batter and holds the fritters together.
Eggs
Add structure and set the batter as it cools, binding the fritters.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter while cooking into a tender interior.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Crushed macaroons
Add almond-based flavour and sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Heat the batter gently before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a very hot mixture can scramble or curdle, so the batter is warmed only until warm and then cooled before the eggs go in, keeping it smooth and evenly bound.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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