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Dessert

Tansey Fritters

Bread fritters made from penny loaf soaked in milk, flavored with tansy and spinach juices, sweetened with sugar, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tansey Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Pour boiling milk over the crumb of the penny loaf and let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. Add tansy juice and spinach juice to flavor.

  3. Mix in ratafia water or brandy, sugar, lemon zest, and egg yolks.

  4. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir the mixture over low heat until thick.

  5. Let it cool for 2-3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls into boiling lard and fry until golden.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with wine sauce and orange slices.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Spinach + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crumb of a penny loaf
Soaked in boiling milk, it forms the soft, absorbent body of the batter.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set firm as it thickens on the stove.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the thickened batter.
Lard
Fries the spoonfuls quickly, browning the outside while keeping the inside moist.

The step that matters

Thickening the batter over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if the mixture gets too hot, so stirring over low heat until thick keeps it smooth and evenly set.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, brandy, sugar, lemon, egg, butter, orange):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, sugar, lemon, egg, butter, orange. 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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