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Corn Oysters

A fried corn fritter made with grated corn, eggs, crackers, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine grated corn, eggs, crushed crackers, melted butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add sweet milk until the mixture is light enough to drop from a spoon.

Fry

  1. Heat butter in a saucepan and drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot butter.

  2. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavour of the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when fried, holding the fritters together.
Crushed crackers
Absorb moisture and add starch so the batter holds its shape.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the fritters brown in the pan.
Sweet milk
Loosens the batter to a droppable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk should be added gradually until the mixture just drops from a spoon. Too much makes the batter runny and the fritters spread or fall apart, while too little leaves them dense and dry inside.

“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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