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Meat Fritters

Meat fritters are small meatballs coated in a thick batter and deep-fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. In a bowl, combine ground meat, pepper, coarse sea salt, and enough gravy or soup stock to moisten.

  2. Add 1 egg and form the mixture into small balls.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, whisk together 2 eggs, flour, baking powder, and a little salt.

  2. Gradually add milk until the batter is thick enough to adhere to the meatballs.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan and fry the meatballs until golden brown.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Ground meat
Forms the main body of the fritters and gives them their savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the meat mixture and the batter, helping the fritters hold together.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the batter so it clings to the meatballs and forms a crisp coating.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the coating lighter and more open when fried.
Milk
Loosens the flour and egg mixture into a batter that coats the meatballs.

The step that matters

Frying the meatballs in lard. The lard must be hot enough to brown the batter quickly. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and the meat inside may cook unevenly.

“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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