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Lentil Fritters

Fried lentil and egg fritters served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Pick and wash the lentils.

  2. Boil the lentils for about 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the lentils in a sieve.

Fry and serve

  1. Add the beaten eggs to the lentils and mix well.

  2. Heat butter in a pan and fry spoonfuls of the mixture until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with brown sauce.

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. Lentils + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lentils + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Lentils
Form the bulk and body of the fritters, giving them a soft, hearty texture.
Eggs
Bind the lentils together and set when cooked, holding the fritters in shape.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and helps the fritters brown to a golden crust with rich flavour.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. The eggs must cook through and set so the spoonfuls hold together. Draining the lentils well matters because excess water loosens the mixture and makes it steam rather than brown.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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