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Corn Oysters

Corn fritters made from grated green corn, eggs, flour, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs with the grated corn.

  3. Add enough flour to form a paste that holds together.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan over medium-high heat.

  2. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture until they are light 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.

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 + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + wheattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Grated green corn
Forms the bulk of the fritters and supplies moisture and sweet corn flavour.
Eggs
Bind the corn together and set during frying to give the fritters structure.
Wheat flour
Thickens the mixture into a paste so the fritters hold their shape in the pan.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside to give a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry spoonfuls of the mixture until light brown on both sides. If the lard is too cool, the fritters absorb fat and turn greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre sets. Turning once at a steady heat gives an even crust.

“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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