Skip to main content
Dessert

Tansey Fritters

A fritter made from penny loaf crumbs, milk, tansy, spinach, lemon rind, egg yolks, butter, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 to flavor and a little juice of spinach to color it green.

  3. Mix in Ratafia water or brandy and sweeten to taste.

  4. Grate the rind of half a lemon and beat in the yolks of 4 eggs.

  5. Combine all ingredients in a stew‑pan with ¼ pound of butter.

  6. Stir over low heat until thick, then let it stand for 2‑3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the mixture when stirred over heat and enrich the batter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the batter set smooth and tender.
Penny loaf crumb
Soaked in hot milk, it forms the body that holds the batter together.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thick. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high. Gentle, steady stirring thickens the custard-like batter evenly so it holds its shape when dropped into the hot lard.

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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes