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Dessert

Rick Fritters

Rice fritters are fried cakes made from boiled rice, eggs, currants, lemon peel, nutmeg, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Rick Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice until it swells, then drain it well.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the drained rice with the beaten eggs, currants, lemon peel, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Stir in enough flour to thicken the mixture.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan and fry spoonfuls of the mixture until golden brown.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells when boiled and gives the fritters body and a tender interior.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set the fritters as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the hot lard.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the fritters.

The step that matters

Drain the rice well. Excess water left in the rice dilutes the batter and makes the fritters greasy and fragile. Thickening with flour only works if the mixture is not already wet.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, flour. 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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