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Currant and Rice Fritters

A fried batter of milk, flour, eggs, boiled rice, currants, sugar, and nutmeg.

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 and Rice Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the milk until smooth.

  2. Add the boiled rice, currants, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Fold in the well-whipped eggs.

Fry

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture in boiling lard until golden brown.

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
Whipped eggs add air and bind the batter, giving the fritters lightness and structure.
Flour
Forms a smooth base with the milk that thickens the batter and holds the fritters together.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid body and tenderness.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the fritters.
Boiled rice
Adds soft body and bulk to the batter, giving a tender, slightly chewy bite.

The step that matters

Fold in the well-whipped eggs. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the eggs, which is what makes the fritters light. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam and leave them dense.

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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