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Potatoe Fritters

Fried potato fritters made with eggs, cream, sweet wine, lemon, nutmeg, served with a sauce of white wine, lemon juice, and warmed sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

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 in a bowl.

  3. Add the cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg to the eggs and mix well.

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

Fry

  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. Alternatively, slice the potatoes thin, dip them in batter, and fry.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made of white wine, lemon juice, peach-leaf or almond water, and warmed white sugar.

  2. Serve with sifted white sugar on top, adding lemon peel and orange-flower water to the batter if desired.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the fritters a soft, tender interior.
Egg whites
Beaten air lightens the batter so the fritters puff and stay light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture for a tender, rich texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Lard
Conducts heat for even frying and gives a golden, crisp crust.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is too cool, the batter soaks up grease and turns heavy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Steady, moderately hot fat gives a light, golden result.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, cream, wine, nutmeg, sugar, orange):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, cream, wine, nutmeg, sugar, 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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