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Corn Meal Fritters

Cornmeal fritters are fried batter made with sour milk, eggs, cornmeal, and baking soda, served with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Corn Meal Fritters

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Meal Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine sour milk, salt, eggs, brown sugar, flour, and enough corn meal to create a moderately stiff batter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and stir it into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the batter in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve with maple syrup.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to make the batter rise and stay tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the hot oil.
Corn meal
Forms the body of the fritters and gives them a crisp, grainy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour and helps the exterior brown.

The step that matters

Fry the batter in hot oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to set the outside quickly, so the fritters brown and crisp rather than absorbing oil and turning greasy. Frying too cool or crowding the pan also makes them soggy and dense.

“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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