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Corn Fritters

Corn fritters are fried corn cakes made with corn, eggs, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Corn Fritters

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Cut the corn grains down the middle of each row and carefully remove them from the cob.

  2. If the grains are large, chop them slightly with a knife.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the corn with the yolks of the eggs, sweet milk, butter, salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the corn mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fresh lard in a skillet and fry the mixture until golden brown on both sides.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Corn
Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the fritters.
Eggs
Yolks bind the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
All-purpose flour
Gives the batter structure so the fritters hold together when fried.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the batter. Overmixing knocks that air out, leaving dense fritters, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, milk, butter, pepper, flour. 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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