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Spinach Fritters

Spinach fritters are small fried pieces of spinach mixed with butter and egg yolks, coated in batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Spinach Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach until tender, then squeeze out excess water and chop finely.

Shape and coat

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped spinach with fresh butter and egg yolks.

  2. Shape the mixture into pieces like sausages.

  3. Dip each piece into the thick batter.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main body and green flavour of the fritter once cooked and drained.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped spinach together so the pieces hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the spinach mixture and helps keep it moist.
Thick batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns in hot oil.

The step that matters

Squeezing the spinach dry. Excess water in the cooked spinach turns to steam in hot oil, which can loosen the mixture and make the coating soggy or cause it to break apart. Squeezing it well before mixing helps the fritters hold together and fry crisp.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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