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Fritters, &C

A sweet fritter made with currants, nutmeg, lemon peel, toast, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fritters, &C

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix nutmeg, beaten eggs, currants, and grated lemon peel in a bowl.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the toasts and heap the mixture on top.

  2. Brush the top with egg and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake until golden and serve.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and set firmly as they bake, holding the fritters together.
Currants
Add sweetness and small pockets of soft, juicy fruit in the filling.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the filling.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aroma that lifts the sweetness of the currants.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned topping on the fritters.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Egg in the filling sets as it heats, and the crumb topping browns as its sugars and starches toast. Pulling the fritters too early leaves the filling runny, while leaving them too long dries the filling and burns the topping.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, egg, lemon, bread. 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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