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Potato Fritters

A fried batter of boiled potatoes, eggs, cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg, served with a sweet wine and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then scrape them finely.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  3. Add the scraped potatoes, cream, sweet wine, lemon juice, and nutmeg to the eggs.

  4. Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until very light.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a good amount of fine lard in a stew-pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until golden.

  3. For serving, warm together white wine, lemon juice, peach-leaf or almond water, and white sugar.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peachtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that gives the fritters a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter for a smooth, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped air and set structure help the batter rise and turn light.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, softening the batter and enriching the crumb.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat the batter for at least 30 minutes until very light. Long beating incorporates air into the egg mixture, which expands in the hot lard and gives the fritters their light texture. Under-beaten batter produces dense, heavy fritters.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, wine, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, peach):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, wine, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, peach. 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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