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Green Corn Oysters

A savory batter of grated sweet corn, milk, eggs, and flour fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Green Corn Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine grated corn, milk, eggs, salt, pepper, and enough flour to create a batter.

Cook and serve

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

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot butter.

  3. Cook until browned on both sides.

  4. Serve hot for breakfast.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. 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

Sweet corn
Provides the main bulk and natural sweetness of the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the grated corn and flour together so the batter holds its shape when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the spoonfuls hold together instead of spreading in the pan.
Milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter and helps the fritters brown in the butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the outside of each fritter and adds richness.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into the hot butter. If the butter is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of forming a browned crust. Heating the pan first sears the outside quickly, helping the fritters hold together.

“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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