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Beef Fritters

Beef fritters are small fried patties made from finely chopped steak mixed with a milk, flour, and egg batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Chop the steak or cold roast beef very fine.

  2. Make a batter by mixing the milk, flour, and egg together.

  3. Combine the meat with the batter.

Fry and season

  1. Melt a lump of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the melted butter.

  3. Fry until brown on both sides.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Steak or cold roast beef
Provides the meat that gives the fritters their savoury flavour and bulk.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the fritters structure once cooked.
Egg
Binds the batter together and helps set the fritters as they cook.
Milk
Loosens the flour and egg into a batter and adds moisture to the fritters.

The step that matters

Fry until brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between surface proteins and sugars at high enough heat. Too low a heat leaves the fritters pale, greasy, and undercooked inside.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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