Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓
Mock Oysters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Grate the corn into a deep dish.
Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then add to the corn.
Mix in the flour, butter, salt, and pepper.
Fry
Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a frying pan with hot butter and lard.
Fry until light brown on both sides.
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.
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Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together465 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Corn
- Provides the main bulk and sweet flavour of the fritters.
- Egg
- Binds the batter together and helps the fritters hold their shape.
- Wheat flour
- Thickens the batter and gives the fritters structure while frying.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the fritters brown in the pan.
The step that matters
Frying the batter spoonfuls. The pan must be hot enough before the batter goes in, so the outside sets and browns quickly. A cold pan lets the batter soak up fat and turn greasy and loose instead of crisp.
“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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