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Dessert

Venetian Fritters

A sweet fritter made from rice, sugar, butter, apples, currants, and eggs, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Venetian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Pick, wash, and drain the rice.

  2. Put the rice into a pint of cold water and bring it to a slow boil, stirring often until thick and dry.

  3. When nearly done, add the sugar, butter, salt, and lemon rind.

Make the fritters

  1. Let it cool in the saucepan until just warm, then mix in the currants, chopped apples, flour, and beaten eggs.

  2. Drop the mixture into small fritters and fry in butter for 5-7 minutes, turning once they are firm on one side.

  3. Drain the fritters and sift white sugar over them before serving.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Rice
Swells and thickens as it cooks, forming the body that holds the fritters together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when fried, giving the fritters structure.
Butter
Adds richness and browns in the pan, giving the fritters flavour and a golden crust.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the fritters.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart freshness that contrasts with the sugar.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the rice base and helps the fritters brown when fried.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until thick and dry. Rice must be stirred over gentle heat until it has absorbed the water and become thick. If it stays wet, the mixture will not hold its shape when dropped and fried, and the fritters may fall apart.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar, butter, lemon, apple, flour, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, butter, lemon, apple, flour, egg. 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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