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Dessert

Tansey Fritters

A fried fritter made from penny loaf crumbs soaked in milk, flavored with tansy, spinach, and lemon, served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Tansey Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pour boiling milk over the crumb of the penny loaf and let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. Add tansy juice, spinach juice, ratafia-water or brandy, sugar, grated lemon rind, and beaten egg yolks; mix well.

  3. Melt butter in a stewpan over low heat and stir the mixture until thick.

  4. Remove from heat and let it stand for 2-3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into a pan of boiling lard and fry until done.

  2. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the fritters and serve with wine sauce and orange slices.

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. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Spinach + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf
Soaked in milk, it forms the bulk and body of the fritter mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as it heats and bind it together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mixture a softer, smoother texture.
Milk
Softens the crumb so it blends into a smooth, moist mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture until thick over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if heated too fast, so gentle low heat with constant stirring thickens the mixture smoothly without curdling.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, brandy, sugar, lemon, egg, butter, orange):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, sugar, lemon, egg, butter, 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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