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Dessert

Currant Fritters

Currant fritters are fried batter with milk, flour, eggs, rice, currants, sugar, nutmeg, served hot with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Currant Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine milk and flour in a bowl, rubbing the flour smooth with a little cold milk.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs, boiled rice, currants, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Beat the mixture for a few minutes.

  4. If the mixture is too thin, add more boiled rice.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fritters on a napkin.

  3. Sprinkle the fritters with sifted sugar.

  4. Serve hot with sliced lemon.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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 the fritters set as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a batter that holds its shape.
Milk
Provides the liquid that makes the batter pourable.
Boiled rice
Adds body to the batter and can be added to thicken it.
Currants
Supply fruity sweetness and small pockets of juicy flavour.

The step that matters

Adjusting the batter thickness. Flour and rice absorb liquid and thicken the batter as it stands. A batter that is too thin will spread and fry flat, so it should hold its shape before frying.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, rice, sugar, nutmeg, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, rice, sugar, nutmeg, lemon. 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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