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Indian Meal Fritters

A fritter made from beaten egg whites, cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, nutmeg, fried in lard, served with a wine-lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Indian Meal Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until stiff.

  2. Add cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until light.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fine lard in a stew pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Warm white wine, lemon juice, peach leaf or almond water, and sugar together for the sauce.

  4. Serve the fritters hot with the 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Lemon + peachtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they trap air that lightens the batter and makes the fritters puff.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the batter a softer, more tender interior.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the sauce.
Fine lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the outside a crisp, golden-brown crust.

The step that matters

Beating the batter until light. Whipped egg white foam is fragile, and overmixing or letting it deflate removes the trapped air, so the fritters come out dense rather than light.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, wine, lemon, nutmeg, white wine, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, wine, lemon, nutmeg, white wine, sugar. 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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