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Dessert

Passover Fritters

A sweet fritter made with biscuit powder, eggs, sugar, lemon peel, and orange flower water, fried until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Passover Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the biscuit powder, beaten eggs, and sugar into a smooth batter.

  2. Add the grated lemon peel and orange flower water.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a pan and fry spoonfuls of the batter until light brown.

Variation

  1. Substitute some beaten almonds for the orange flower water for variation.

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. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Biscuit powder
Provides the starch and body that hold the batter together as it fries.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during frying to give the fritters structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown in the hot oil.
Orange flower water
Adds a floral aroma that flavours the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls of batter. The oil must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the fritters soak up oil and turn greasy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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