Skip to main content
Main

Spinach Fritters

Spinach fritters made with boiled spinach, grated bread, nutmeg, sugar, and cream or eggs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the spinach thoroughly, then drain and mince it well.

  2. In a bowl, combine the minced spinach, grated bread, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Add enough cream or beaten eggs to achieve a batter-like consistency.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil.

  3. Fry until the fritters rise and are golden brown, then remove and drain.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the main body of the fritters and gives them their green flavour and colour.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the spinach into a batter that holds its shape.
Cream or eggs
Bind the mixture into a batter; eggs also set when heated, giving the fritters structure.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and supports browning in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Fry in oil that is hot enough. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy before the outside sets. Hot oil seals the surface quickly, so the fritters rise and brown evenly.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, sugar, cream. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes