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Egg Fritters

Egg fritters made with eggs, cheese, butter, milk, flour, parsley, salt, pepper, and mustard, fried in oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour and butter in a saucepan and boil in the milk, stirring until thickened.

  2. Let the mixture cool slightly, then beat in the eggs.

  3. Grate and stir the cheese into the egg mixture.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and a little mustard.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling oil and fry until light brown.

  2. Fry the parsley in the boiling oil until crisp.

  3. Drain the parsley on paper.

  4. Serve the fritters with the crispy parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the mixture and bind the fritters, giving them structure when fried.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture, giving the base body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the thickened base and helps flavour the fritters.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce-like mixture.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness to the egg mixture.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into boiling oil and fry until light brown. The oil must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb oil and turn greasy and heavy instead of crisp and light.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cheese, butter, milk, flour, parsley, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, butter, milk, flour, parsley, pepper. 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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