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Mock Oysters

A corn-based batter mixed with egg, milk, and butter, thickened with flour, then fried or cooked on a griddle.

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 ↓

Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the corn and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg, milk, salt, and butter to the corn and mix well.

  3. Stir in enough flour to thicken the mixture.

Cook

  1. Fry in hot lard or cook on a griddle like batter cakes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 corn flavour of the fritters.
Egg
Binds the grated corn and helps hold the mixture together while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it can be cooked into cakes rather than running loose.
Milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter and soften the texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the batter for flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in enough flour to thicken the mixture. Grated corn releases moisture, so too little flour leaves a loose batter that falls apart in the hot fat. Add flour gradually until the mixture holds its shape when spooned.

“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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