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Mock Oysters

A fried corn batter shaped like oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the corn into a deep dish.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolk separately, then mix with the corn.

  3. Add the flour, butter, salt, and pepper to the corn mixture.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a frying pan with hot butter and lard.

  2. Fry until light 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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 bulk and natural sweetness of the fritters.
Egg
Binds the grated corn together and helps the fritters hold their shape.
Wheat flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together when dropped into the pan.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the fritters brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls of batter. If the pan is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy, and if it is too hot the outside browns before the inside cooks. Medium-high heat with a steady fat layer gives an even golden crust.

“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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