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Meat Fritters

Meat fritters are fried cold meat coated in a batter of flour, oil, water, eggs and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and salt.

  2. Add salad oil and mix into a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually stir in tepid water until there are no lumps.

  4. Separate the egg whites and yolks. Set the yolks aside.

  5. Sprinkle salt over the egg whites and whip them to stiff peaks.

  6. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the batter.

  7. Let the batter rest for 1 hour to rise.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat clarified dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Dip cold meat into the batter.

  3. Fry until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  3. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped whites trap air, giving the fritters a light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, setting into a coating around the meat when fried.
Cold meat
The main filling, enclosed in the batter and cooked through by the frying fat.
Clarified dripping
Frying fat that browns the batter's surface and crisps the coating.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the paste, tenderising the batter and softening its texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stirring rather than folding knocks out the air trapped in the whites, so the batter loses its lightness and the fritters turn dense.

“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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