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Dessert

Sweet Potato Fritters

Sweet potato fritters are fried cakes made from mashed sweet potatoes, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and coated with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil, skin, and dry the sweet potatoes in an open oven.

  2. Mash the potatoes while warm and rub through a colander or vegetable press.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the milk, butter, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add the yolks of the beaten eggs and mix well.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into flat cakes using floured hands.

  2. Dip each cake into the frothed egg whites, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Chill, fry and serve

  1. Chill the cakes on ice for 2 hours.

  2. Fry in deep, boiling fat until golden brown.

  3. Serve with lemon sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Starchy base that gives the fritters their body and natural sweetness.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the mash; frothed whites help the coating stick.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the mash so it shapes smoothly.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender interior.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown when fried.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating around the cakes when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in deep, boiling fat until golden brown. The fat must be deep and very hot so the coating crisps quickly. Cool fat soaks into the cakes and makes them greasy, while fat that is too hot browns the outside before the centre heats through.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Sweet potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, 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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