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Dessert

Venetian Fritters

A sweet fritter made from rice, milk, sugar, butter, lemon rind, currants, apples, flour, and eggs, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Venetian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Pick and wash the rice.

  2. Put the rice into the cold milk.

  3. Bring the mixture to a slow boil, stirring often.

  4. Simmer gently until thick and dry.

  5. Add the sugar, butter, salt, and lemon rind.

  6. Let the mixture cool in the saucepan until just warm.

Fry and serve

  1. Mix in the currants, chopped apples, flour, and beaten eggs thoroughly.

  2. Drop small fritters into hot butter.

  3. Fry the fritters for 5 to 7 minutes, turning when firm on one side.

  4. Drain the fritters as you take them up.

  5. Sift white sugar over the fritters before serving.

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

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the fritters their body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the fritters together.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and a fruity flavour throughout.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fritters brown when fried.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until thick and dry. Rice starch thickens the milk slowly, and high heat can scorch the bottom or leave the grains unevenly cooked. The mixture must be thick enough to hold its shape, or the fritters will spread and fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the currant

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

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

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