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Corn Oysters

Corn Oysters are fried corn batter fritters made with flour, butter, milk, salt, pepper, and grated corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and beat well.

  2. Add the melted butter, milk, salt, pepper, and grated corn, then beat rapidly for 3 minutes.

Fry

  1. Heat fat in a frying pan to a depth of 2 inches.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat.

  3. Fry for about 5 minutes 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour forms a spoonable batter.
Grated corn
Supplies the main flavor and moisture within the fritters.

The step that matters

Fry for about 5 minutes until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough when the batter goes in; if it is too cool, the fritters absorb oil and turn greasy, and if it is too hot the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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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