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Corn Mock Oysters

Corn mock oysters are fried corn cakes made with grated corn, milk, flour, butter, salt, pepper, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated corn, milk, flour, butter, salt, pepper, and egg until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a little butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Drop the mixture by dessert spoonfuls into the skillet.

  3. Sauté until golden brown on both sides.

  4. Serve hot on a warm platter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Grated green corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the fritters.
Flour
Binds the batter and gives the fritters structure as they cook.
Egg
Helps bind the mixture and sets during cooking to hold its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fritters brown in the skillet.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter is loose enough to spoon.

The step that matters

Sauté until golden brown on both sides. Cooking over medium heat lets the centre set while the outside browns. Too high a heat scorches the surface before the batter cooks through, and too low leaves the fritters pale and soggy.

“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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