Skip to main content
Main

Celery Fritters

A batter of flour, milk, eggs, and spices is poured over boiled celery and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the milk, then mix in the melted butter, beaten eggs, and baking powder.

  3. Boil the celery pieces until tender, then drain and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Fry

  1. Dip the celery in the batter and fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure once hydrated with milk and eggs.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter so it puffs while frying.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a pourable batter that coats the celery.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the battered celery in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot oil sets the crust quickly, so it browns and stays light.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes