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Potatoe Fritters

A fried potato batter with egg, cream, wine, lemon, nutmeg, served with a warm sauce of wine, lemon, peach‑leaf or almond water, and sugar.

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 ↓

Potatoe Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together, then add the cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

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

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a good amount of fine lard in a stew‑pan.

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

  3. For serving, warm together white wine, lemon juice, peach‑leaf or almond water, and white sugar.

  4. Serve the sauce separately, not in the dish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Potatoes
Scraped fine, they give the fritters a soft, tender body and moisture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the batter set softly and brown when fried.
Egg whites
Beaten into the batter, they trap air that lightens the fritters.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the batter richer and more tender.
Sweet wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until light. Long beating incorporates air that leavens the batter, so the fritters puff and stay light rather than dense and heavy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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