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Onion and Sage Fritters

Fritters made from boiled onions, sage, parsley, bread crumbs, and eggs, fried until golden and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Onion and Sage Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Boil the onions in two waters until tender.

  2. Chop the onions small and mix with sage, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the bread crumbs and beaten eggs, mixing well.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into fritters and fry in oil and butter over moderate heat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with brown gravy and reserved onion and sage on top.

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. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the bulk and sweet flavor of the fritters after being boiled and chopped.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture so the fritters hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set the fritters as they cook.
Fresh sage
Adds an aromatic, earthy flavor that complements the onions.

The step that matters

Fry over moderate heat until golden brown. Moderate heat lets the centre set through while the outside browns through Maillard reactions, without burning the sugars in the butter and oil before the fritter is cooked inside.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, parsley, pepper, bread, egg, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, parsley, pepper, bread, egg, butter. 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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