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Meat Fritters

A fried dish of thinly sliced meat coated in a batter of flour, butter, water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a basin, combine flour and salt.

  2. Add melted butter and gradually stir in tepid water until smooth.

  3. In a separate plate, whip egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff.

  4. Gently fold whipped egg whites into the batter and let it rise for 1 hour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a saucepan until hot and smoking.

  2. Dip meat slices in the batter, ensuring they are fully coated.

  3. Carefully drop coated meat slices into the hot lard, avoiding overcrowding.

  4. Fry until golden brown on both sides, turning as needed. Skim the fat occasionally to prevent burning.

  5. Remove fritters with a perforated spoon and drain on paper.

  6. Serve fritters on a hot plate.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the batter so the fritters puff and stay airy.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that coats the meat and crisps during frying.
Melted butter
Adds fat to the batter, contributing richness and tenderness to the coating.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat for even browning and a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard without overcrowding. Lard must be hot enough to seal the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy. Crowding the pan drops the fat temperature and causes the same problem.

“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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