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Dessert

Currant Fritters

A batter of milk, flour, eggs, boiled rice, currants, sugar, and nutmeg fried in lard and served hot with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the milk and flour in a bowl to form a smooth batter, adding a little cold milk.

  2. Stir in the well-whisked eggs, boiled rice, currants, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Beat the mixture for a few minutes; if it is too thin, add more boiled rice.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop small amounts of the mixture into a pan of boiling lard or clarified dripping.

  2. Fry until golden brown, then drain on blotting paper.

  3. Serve hot on a white cloth, sprinkled with sifted sugar, and provide a cut lemon.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set and hold their shape when fried.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the fritters structure as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the flour and eggs into a batter and adds softness.
Boiled rice
Thickens the batter so it can be adjusted for consistency and adds a tender texture.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The lard must be boiling hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, so the fritters stay greasy-free and do not soak up fat or turn heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, rice, sugar, nutmeg. 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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