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Dessert

Blackberry Fritters

Fried blackberry fritters made with a common batter and flavored with cloves, mace, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fritters

  1. Mix the blackberries with the common batter.

  2. Drop by tablespoons into hot lard and fry until golden.

Make the spiced syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine water and sugar; boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the extracts of cloves, mace, and ginger.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Blackberries
Provide the fruit flavor and juicy filling inside the fritters.
Common batter
Forms the coating that holds the berries together and fries to a golden crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down.
Extract of cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Extract of mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Extract of ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Drop by tablespoons into hot lard and fry until golden. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of forming a crisp, golden crust. Frying in batches keeps the fat temperature steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, ginger. 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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