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Cheese Fritters

Cheese fritters are small fried cakes made with flour, cheese, egg, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cheese Fritters

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt, pepper, mustard, and grated cheese.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the warm water and the yolk of the egg.

  3. Combine this with the flour mixture gradually.

  4. Beat the egg white until stiff, then fold it into the mixture last.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat and fry until golden brown, turning to brown both sides.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once combined with liquid.
Cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and helps the fritters brown.
Egg white
Beaten until stiff, it adds lightness and helps the fritters puff.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter together.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg white. Fold gently so the whipped foam keeps its air. Stirring it in hard deflates the foam, leaving the fritters denser and less light.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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