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Corn Mock Oysters

A fried corn batter resembling oysters.

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 Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the corn from the cob.

  2. Whisk the eggs and add them to the corn.

  3. Stir in the milk, salt, and pepper.

  4. Sift in the flour and mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan with butter over medium heat.

  2. Drop large spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan.

  3. Fry until brown, then turn to cook the other side.

  4. Serve on hot plates.

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

Corn
Provides the bulk and the sweet, tender body of the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Flour
Adds body and helps hold the spoonfuls together while frying.
Milk
Moistens the batter so it cooks through with a soft interior.
Butter
Fat in the pan that promotes browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Fry until brown, then turn. The batter is wet and loosely held, so it needs enough set and browning on the first side before turning; turning too early can tear the fritter apart, and the mixture needs time over medium heat to cook through.

“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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