Skip to main content
Main

Savoury Fritters

A batter of flour, baking soda, salt, pepper, nutmeg, herbs, salt meat, tartaric acid, and water fried into golden fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savoury Fritters

about a dozen fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, pepper, nutmeg, herbs, and chopped salt meat.

  2. Dissolve tartaric acid in a little water and add to the mixture. Mix until you have a stiff batter.

Fry

  1. Drop tablespoons of the batter into hot fat and fry until golden.

  2. This recipe makes about a dozen fritters.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,656 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 stiff batter that holds each fritter together.
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 bubbles, giving the fritters a lighter texture.
Salt meat
Adds savory flavor and fat that enriches the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the tartaric acid and baking soda reaction. The acid and baking soda must be combined into the batter promptly and mixed in, because the gas bubbles that lighten the fritters form as soon as they meet and are lost if the batter stands too long or is overmixed.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, meat. 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

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes