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Corn Frittebs

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Frittebs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the grains from the corn ears using a knife.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the flour.

  3. Thin the mixture with the milk and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir in the corn until well combined.

Fry

  1. Drop large spoonfuls of the mixture into hot lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 their shape while frying.
Flour
Thickens the beaten eggs and milk so the batter clings to the corn.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture to the fritters.
Corn
Provides the main body, sweetness and texture of the fritters.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Drop large spoonfuls of the mixture into hot lard.. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the fritters brown evenly and hold their shape.

“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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