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Fried Cow-heel, with Onion Fritters

A dish of boiled cow-heel sliced and fried with onion fritters in batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fried Cow-heel, with Onion Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cow-heel

  1. Clean the cow-heel.

  2. Boil it for 3 hours until very tender.

  3. Remove all bones.

  4. Compress the meat between two boards with a heavy weight until cold.

  5. Cut the cow-heel into neat round slices, about ⅙ inch thick.

Prepare the onions and batter

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Slice them to match the number of cow-heel slices.

  3. Make a batter by beating together the eggs, flour, milk, and cream for 30 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each slice of cow-heel into the batter.

  2. Dip each onion slice into the batter.

  3. Heat the oil or butter over low heat.

  4. Fry the cow-heel and onion until pale brown.

  5. Arrange the cow-heel and onion alternately in a circle on a dish.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and coat the slices.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it clings to the cow-heel and onion slices.
Milk
Thins the batter to a coating consistency and adds moisture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat to the batter, softening its texture.
Cow-heel
Main protein; boiling makes it tender before it is sliced and fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cow-heel and onion until pale brown. Frying over low heat sets the batter gently and browns it slowly, so the coating turns golden without burning before the slices are heated through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, cream, 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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