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Russian Fritters

A fried fritter made from dried haddock, egg yolks, butter, anchovy paste, shallot, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Russian Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haddock

  1. Pour boiling water over the haddock and let it stand for a few minutes.

  2. Pound the haddock and rub it through a wire sieve along with the egg yolks.

Make the fritters

  1. Mix the haddock, egg yolks, melted butter, anchovy paste, shallot, parsley, and season with pepper and lemon juice.

  2. Form the mixture into small cylinder shapes.

  3. Dip the shapes into frying batter and fry in hot fat for about three minutes.

  4. Drain and 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried haddock
Provides the main fish body and flavour that forms the fritter's base.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture into a smooth, shapeable paste.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture in the mixture.
Anchovy paste
Adds a savoury, salty depth that enhances the fish flavour.

The step that matters

Dip the shapes into frying batter and fry in hot fat. Fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp, and the filling may break apart.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, anchovy, parsley, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, anchovy, parsley, egg, pepper, 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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