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Lentil Fritters

A fried or baked patty made from cooked lentils, milk, egg, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lentil Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Cook the lentils until tender, then drain and press through a colander.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the lentils with milk, butter, flour, salt, and the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white gently.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto an oiled griddle and brown on both sides, or bake in the oven.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve with marmalade or apple sauce.

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. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Lentils
Form the main body of the fritters and give them a soft, hearty texture.
Egg
The yolk binds the batter, and the whipped white adds air that lightens the fritters.
Flour
Adds starch that helps the mixture hold its shape while it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.
Milk
Adds moisture that keeps the batter loose and the interior tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. The stiffly beaten egg white traps air that gives the fritters lift. Fold it in gently with a few broad strokes so the foam is not deflated, keeping the batter light before it reaches the griddle.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

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