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Minced Meat Fritters

A fried patty made from minced meat, breadcrumbs or flour, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Minced Meat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the minced meat, bread crumbs (or flour), eggs, and lemon juice together until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil and fry until golden 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

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

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Minced meat
Forms the main body of the fritters and gives them savoury flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together while frying.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the fritters hold their shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the meat.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. The oil must be hot before the spoonfuls go in. Hot oil sets the outside quickly and browns it, while cool oil lets the fritters soak up grease and fall apart.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, egg. 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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