Skip to main content
Bread

Corn Fritters

Corn fritters are small fried cakes made from sweet corn, egg, milk, flour, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Corn Fritters

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the corn from the cob and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg, milk, and flour to the corn and mix well.

Fry

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

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sweet corn
Provides the main bulk and natural sweetness of the fritters.
Egg
Binds the corn and flour together and helps the fritters set while frying.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape when dropped into the fat.
Milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter and softens the texture slightly.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the outside.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters absorb more fat and turn greasy rather than crisping and browning. Heating the fat first helps the outside set quickly.

“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.

More corn fritters recipes

Green 46Sweet 7 See all 396 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes