Name: Green Corn Fritters
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet corn; 1 pint sweet milk; 3 well beaten eggs; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; 2 tablespoons melted butter; Flour as needed

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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Combine sweet corn, sweet milk, and beaten eggs in a bowl. Stir well.
Season with salt, pepper, and melted butter, mixing thoroughly.
Add a little flour to help the ingredients stick together.

Cook

Fry on a griddle or bake in the oven if preferred.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs: Bind the batter and help set the fritters as they cook.
Flour: Helps the mixture hold together so the fritters keep their shape.
Melted butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the fritters brown in the pan.
Sweet milk: Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
Sweet corn: Forms the main body and sweet flavor of the fritters.

“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.