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Dessert

Tanscy Fritters

A fritter made from milk‑soaked penny loaf crumbs, flavored with tansy, spinach, and lemon rind, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tanscy Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Pour boiling milk over the crumb of the penny loaf and let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. Add juice of tansy and spinach to flavor and color the mixture.

  3. Stir in Ratifia water or brandy, sugar, lemon rind, and beaten egg yolks.

  4. Cook the mixture in a saucepan with butter over low heat until thick.

  5. Let it cool for 2-3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls into boiling lard and fry until golden.

  2. Serve with grated sugar and wine sauce, garnished with orange slices.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Spinach + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf crumb
Soaked in hot milk, it forms the body that holds the fritter mixture together.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as it cooks and add richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture become smooth and thick.
Milk
Softens the bread crumb and provides the liquid base for the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture until thick. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; over high heat they can scramble, so low heat and constant stirring keep the mixture smooth before it cools and is fried.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, brandy, sugar, lemon, egg, butter, orange):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, sugar, lemon, egg, butter, orange. 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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