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Beef Fritters

Beef fritters are small fried patties made from chopped roast beef mixed with flour, herbs, lemon zest, nutmeg, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, tepid water, and melted butter to form a smooth batter.

  2. Add the chopped beef, herbs, lemon zest, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the batter.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly whisked egg white.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan until hot.

  2. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve in a pyramidal shape on a folded napkin or dish-paper, garnished with fried parsley.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter structure that holds the beef and sets as the fritters fry.
Egg white
Whisked to stiff peaks, it lightens the batter and helps the fritters puff and stay tender.
Roast beef
Provides the savoury meaty flavour and the main body of each fritter.
Melted butter
Adds richness and flavour to the batter and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white gently. Stiffly whisked egg white holds air in the batter; vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the fritters turn out flat and dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, pepper. 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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