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Dessert

Rhubarb Fritters

Fried rhubarb batter served with butter, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 177 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir milk, salt, and beaten eggs until smooth.

  2. Add rhubarb cubes and mix thoroughly.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling fat, ensuring each spoonful is separate.

  2. Flatten the tops of the fritters slightly and fry until brown on one side, then turn to cook the other side.

  3. Once cooked, let them drain and place on a hot dish.

Serve

  1. Top each fritter with a piece of butter, a sprinkle of nutmeg, and sifted sugar.

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. Rhubarb + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set when fried.
Milk
Thins the batter to a smooth, pourable consistency that cooks through.
Rhubarb
Adds tart flavour and moisture pockets that contrast with the set batter.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into boiling fat, keeping them separate. Batter dropped into hot fat sets its outside quickly, so spacing the spoonfuls lets each one brown evenly and keeps them from fusing together while they cook.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, nutmeg, sugar. 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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