Skip to main content
Dessert

Corn-meal Fritters

A fried batter made with sour milk, cornmeal, eggs, and molasses or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn-meal Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, salt, eggs, molasses or sugar, and flour.

  2. Add cornmeal until the mixture forms a stiff batter.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in warm water and stir it into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the batter in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Drain on a clean napkin and serve hot.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift and aerate the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the fritters.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and the coarse, crisp-edged texture of the fritter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that makes the fritters rise.
Molasses or sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fritters brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry spoonfuls of the batter in hot oil until golden brown.. If the oil is not hot enough, the fritters absorb excess oil and turn greasy and dense instead of crisp and golden. Frying in small spoonfuls keeps the oil temperature steady.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes