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Corn Oysters

Corn fritters made with boiled corn, eggs, flour, and butter, fried until golden.

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

  1. Cut the corn off the cob.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until thick.

Make the batter

  1. Season the corn with pepper and salt, then mix with the yolks and flour.

  2. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the corn mixture.

Fry

  1. In a hot pan with butter, drop spoonfuls of the mixture and 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

Corn
Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the fritters.
Eggs
Yolks bind the mixture and whites, whipped to stiff peaks, lighten the batter and help it puff.
Flour
Helps bind the corn and yolks so the fritters hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Fries the fritters, adding richness and helping them brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that makes the batter light. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, leaving dense fritters, so fold gently until just combined.

“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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