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Corn Fritters or Mock Oysters

Corn fritters are fried corn cakes made with flour, eggs, salt, pepper, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Fritters or Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Add the flour, eggs, salt, and pepper to the corn and mix well.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan over medium‑high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard.

  3. Fry 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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 bulk and natural sweetness of the fritters.
All-purpose flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the batter hold together while frying.
Eggs
Bind the corn and set when heated, giving the fritters structure.
Lard
Conducts heat to cook the fritters and browns their surfaces.

The step that matters

Heating the lard before frying. The lard must be hot before the batter goes in. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre sets.

“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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