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Herb Fritters

Herb fritters are small fried dough pieces mixed with fresh herbs and lightly sweetened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Herb Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the herbs in cold water and drain them.

  2. Mix flour, water, and salt to make a paste.

  3. Add the herbs to the paste and coat them well.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated herbs in boiling oil until golden brown.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and serve.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Mint + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter paste that coats the herbs and crisps when fried.
Fresh mint or spearmint or other fragrant herbs
Provides the main flavor and aroma of the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying the coated herbs in boiling oil. The oil must be hot enough to set the batter quickly and brown it. If the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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