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Corn Patties

Corn patties are fried corn cakes made with egg, flour, salt, pepper, and lard or 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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the corn, beaten egg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add enough flour to thicken the mixture so it can be dropped from a spoon. Stir thoroughly.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard and butter in a pan over medium-high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot fat and fry until brown, then turn to cook the other side.

  3. Serve hot.

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 supplies their sweet, tender body.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the patties hold together while frying.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape when dropped into the fat.
Lard and butter
Conducts heat for frying and gives the patties browning and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the patties absorb oil and turn greasy instead of forming a crisp browned crust. Starting in hot fat sears the surface quickly so the patty holds together and browns evenly.

“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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