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 Fritters
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine the corn, milk, egg, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper. Mix until well combined.
Fry
Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat.
Drop 1 tablespoon of batter into the pan for each fritter.
Fry until golden brown on both sides.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 the starch and gluten network that gives the fritters their body.
- Egg
- Binds the batter together and helps set the fritters as they cook.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during cooking so the fritters puff and rise.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
- Sugar
- Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown.
The step that matters
Fry until golden brown on both sides. The batter is wet and thick, so the pan needs to be hot enough to set the outside quickly. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction at the surface, and the centre needs time to cook through before the fritters are flipped and served.
“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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