Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Corn Oysters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Grate the corn off the cob into a pan.
Mix the grated corn with flour and salt.
Add the yolks of the eggs and beat the mixture together.
Fry and serve
Heat equal parts butter and lard in a frying pan until hot.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan, shaping them like oysters and about ½ inch thick.
Fry until golden brown on both sides.
Serve hot in a chafing dish.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,165 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Sugar corn
- Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the fritters.
- Egg yolks
- Bind the grated corn and enrich the batter so the fritters hold their shape.
- Flour
- Absorbs moisture and helps the batter hold together while frying.
- Butter and lard
- Conduct heat for frying and add richness and browning to the outside.
The step that matters
Frying the fritters over steady heat. The fat must be hot before the batter goes in, so the outside sets and browns quickly. If the pan is too cool, the grated corn absorbs oil, the fritters turn greasy, and they may fall apart before they set.
“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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