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Pork Fritters

Fried pork slices coated in a batter of Indian meal, flour, egg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Pork Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Freshen the pork slices.

  2. Fry 1 or 2 slices to obtain fat for frying the remaining slices.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each slice in a batter made of Indian meal, flour, beaten egg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Drop into bubbling fat and cook until brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

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

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

Pork slices
The main protein, which cooks through while the coating crisps in hot fat.
Indian meal
Forms a coating that turns crisp and brown when fried.
Flour
Adds structure to the batter so it clings to the pork and forms a firm crust.
Egg
Binds the batter together and helps it set into a cohesive coating as it fries.

The step that matters

Drop into bubbling fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter soaks up oil instead of crisping, leaving the fritters greasy and pale. Hot fat sets the coating quickly and drives off surface moisture so it browns.

“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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