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Dessert

Currant Fritters

A batter of flour, salt, baking soda, currants, nutmeg, and tartaric acid is fried into golden fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Add currants and nutmeg, then mix well.

  3. Dissolve tartaric acid in a small amount of water.

  4. Mix the dissolved tartaric acid into the dry ingredients to form a stiff batter.

Fry

  1. Spoon the batter into hot fat.

  2. Fry 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter once mixed with liquid.
Baking soda
Reacts with the tartaric acid to release gas, helping the fritters rise and lighten.
Tartaric acid
Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas for lift and adds a slight tang.
Currants
Add sweetness, fruity flavor, and chewy pockets throughout the fritters.

The step that matters

Spoon the batter into hot fat. The batter must go into hot fat so its outer surface sets and browns quickly. Cold fat lets the batter soak up oil and turn greasy, and the leavening gas escapes before the structure is set.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, nutmeg. 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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