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Turnip Fritters

Turnip fritters are fried batter made from boiled turnips, flour, milk, egg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turnip Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the turnips until tender, then mash them finely.

  2. In a bowl, mix the mashed turnips with flour, milk, egg, and sugar to form a batter.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard.

  3. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Turnips
Provide the main bulk and moisture, forming the body of the fritter.
All-purpose flour
Gives the batter structure so the fritters hold together when fried.
Egg
Binds the mashed turnips and flour into a cohesive batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a droppable consistency.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard over medium heat. Batter dropped into lard that is hot enough sets quickly on the outside, which keeps the fritters from absorbing excess fat and turning greasy. Sugar in the batter browns readily, so the surface can darken before the centre is cooked through if the heat is too high.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, sugar. 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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