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Pancakes and Fritters

A batter of flour, sugar, spices, currants, and water is fried in lard and served with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pancakes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, currants, and salt.

  2. Add enough water to make a thick batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve with white sugar and butter.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 batter's structure once mixed with water and sets as it fries.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit and sweetness throughout the fritters.
Lard
Fries the batter in hot fat, promoting browning and a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. The lard must be hot before the batter goes in. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb grease and turn heavy and oily instead of browning quickly and staying crisp.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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