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Corn Fritters

A fried corn batter with eggs, butter, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Corn Fritters

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

  1. Combine corn, eggs, butter, sweet milk, flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl and mix until well combined.

Fry

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the skillet.

  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.

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters hold together while frying.
Flour
Provides structure so the fritters hold their shape rather than spreading.
Corn
Supplies the main bulk, sweetness and texture of the fritters.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter and soften the interior.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction at the surface, which needs enough heat. Too low a heat leaves the fritters pale and greasy, while too high burns the outside before the centre cooks through.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, egg, butter, milk, flour, pepper):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, butter, milk, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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