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Dessert

Corn Oysters

Corn Oysters are fried corn fritters made with boiled corn, eggs, flour, pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the corn off the cob and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until thick and mix with the corn and flour.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold into the corn mixture.

Fry

  1. Heat butter in a pan and drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot butter.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Yolks bind the batter and whites, whisked to stiff peaks, lighten it so the fritters stay tender.
Flour
Provides starch that helps the batter hold together and set while frying.
Boiled corn
Supplies the main body, sweetness and texture of the fritters.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat that browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the whisked whites, which removes the air that keeps the fritters light. Fold gently so the batter stays airy.

“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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