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Corn Oysters

Corn Oysters are fried corn cakes made with grated corn, milk, flour, butter, eggs, pepper, and sea salt.

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 ↓

Corn Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together the grated corn, sweet milk, flour, butter, and beaten eggs.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fry

  1. Heat butter in a skillet and pour the mixture to fry like griddle cakes 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. 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

Flour
Provides starch that thickens the batter and gives the fritters structure as they set.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm while the fritters cook.
Grated sweet corn
Supplies the main body, sweetness and flavour of the fritters.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it spread and brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown on both sides. The batter is wet and loose, so it needs enough heat and time to set before flipping. Flipping too early can tear the fritters, while a pan that is too cool leaves them pale and greasy.

“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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