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Mock Oysters of Corn

A fried corn fritter made from grated sweet corn, egg, flour, milk, and butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mock Oysters of Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the corn from the cob into a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg and stir it into the flour and milk.

  3. Mix the egg mixture with the grated corn and season with salt and pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter or lard in a pan until very hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the corn mixture into the pan and brown well on both sides.

  3. Serve hot for breakfast.

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

Sweet corn
Provides the main body and sweetness of the fritters.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the fritters hold their shape.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the batter and helps the fritters hold together.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter is loose enough to drop from a spoon.
Butter or lard
Fat for frying that promotes browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Brown well on both sides. The pan must be very hot before the spoonfuls go in, so the outside sets and browns quickly rather than absorbing fat and steaming. Browning adds flavour, and a fully set interior prevents the fritters from falling apart when turned.

“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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