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Venetian Fritters

A fried batter of rice, apples, currants, lemon rind, sugar, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Venetian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Wash and drain the rice.

  2. Combine the rice, grated lemon rind, currants, sugar, butter, salt, minced apples, and eggs in a bowl.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a batter.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown, then remove and drain on paper towels.

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

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

  2. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the fritters as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the mixture into a batter that holds its shape when dropped into oil.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing tenderness and flavour to the fritters.
Whole rice
Provides the bulk and chewy body of the fritter filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. The batter must be dropped into hot oil so the outside sets and browns quickly, forming a crisp crust before the interior cooks through. Oil that is too cool lets the fritters soak up grease and turn heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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