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Corn Patties

Corn patties are fried corn cakes made with grated corn, egg, flour, salt, pepper, and fried in butter or lard.

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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the corn from the ears.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated corn with salt, pepper, beaten egg, and flour.

  3. Heat butter or lard in a skillet over medium-high heat.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot fat and fry until golden 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
Forms the bulk of the patties and provides the main sweet, starchy flavor.
Egg
Binds the grated corn so the patties hold together when fried.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the corn and helps the mixture hold its shape.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot fat and fry until golden brown. Frying in hot fat sets the egg and starch on the surface quickly, forming a crust that holds the patty together. Placing the mixture into cool fat lets it soak up grease and fall apart, and the Maillard browning that gives golden colour needs sustained heat.

“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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