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Dessert

Potato Fritters

A fried potato batter made with eggs, cream, sweet wine, lemon, nutmeg, and lard, served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then scrape them finely.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  3. Add the cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg to the eggs and mix well.

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

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a good amount of fine lard in a stewpan.

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

  3. Serve with white sugar sprinkled on top.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the fritters their soft, tender body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help the batter bind and set when fried.
Egg whites
Whipped air in the batter lightens the texture so the fritters stay airy.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the batter smoother and the fritters more tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the eggs.

The step that matters

Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until light. Long beating incorporates air into the egg mixture, which gives the fritters their light texture. Under-beaten batter will fry up dense and heavy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, cream, wine, nutmeg, sugar, orange):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, cream, wine, nutmeg, sugar, orange. 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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