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Dessert

Tansey Fritters

A fritter made from milk‑soaked bread crumbs flavored with tansy, spinach, and other ingredients, fried in lard.

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

Make the batter

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

  2. Add juice of tansy and spinach to flavor and color the mixture.

  3. Stir in Ratifia water or brandy, sugar, lemon rind, and egg yolks until well combined.

  4. Melt butter in a stew‑pan and stir the mixture over low heat until thick.

  5. Let it cool for 2‑3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard and fry until golden.

  2. Serve with grated sugar and wine sauce, garnished with 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 crumb
Soaked in hot milk, it forms the bulk and soft body of the batter.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it thicken on heating, adding richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the cooked batter.
Milk
Softens the bread crumb and provides the liquid base of the batter.

The step that matters

Thickening over low heat. Stirring over low heat lets the egg yolks thicken the mixture gently. Higher heat can scramble the yolks, leaving a grainy batter that will not hold its shape when fried.

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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