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Celery Fritters

A fried dish of boiled celery pieces coated in batter, served hot with optional tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until tender.

  2. Dry the celery thoroughly with a cloth.

  3. Cut the celery into pieces two inches long and keep wrapped in cloth.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each piece in batter.

  2. Immerse in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and serve with tomato sauce if desired.

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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Celery + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Is the main ingredient, cooked until tender and then coated and fried.
Batter
Coats the celery and fries to a crisp, golden outer layer.
Lard
Frying fat that browns the batter and gives the fritters a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Drying the celery thoroughly. Surface moisture makes batter slide off and can cause hot lard to spatter. Drying the celery well helps the batter cling and fry evenly.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, sauce. 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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