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Spinach Fritters

Spinach fritters are fried patties made from boiled spinach, bread, nutmeg, sugar, and cream or eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the spinach thoroughly, then drain and mince it well.

  2. Mix in the grated bread, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Add enough cream or beaten eggs to achieve a batter-like consistency.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a frying pan of boiling lard.

  2. When the fritters rise to the surface, remove them, drain, and serve.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the fritter and supplies its green flavour and moisture.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold together as a batter.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during frying to give the fritters structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter to a workable consistency.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness that balances the savoury spinach and nutmeg.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough that the batter sets quickly on contact. If the lard is not hot, the fritters absorb grease and turn heavy and soggy instead of crisp and light.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, sugar, cream):

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, sugar, cream. 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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