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 Clysters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Shave corn from the ear as needed.
In a bowl, mix the corn with sweet milk, beaten egg, and flour.
Fry and serve
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard.
Turn the clysters over when brown on one side.
Once cooked, spread with a little butter.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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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).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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
- Fresh corn
- Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the fritters.
- Egg
- Binds the batter together and helps the fritters set as they cook.
- Flour
- Thickens the batter and gives the fritters structure while they fry.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture to the batter so it can be spooned and fried.
The step that matters
Drop spoonfuls into boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough that the batter sears on contact. If the fat is too cool, the fritters absorb grease, turn heavy, and cook unevenly before browning.
“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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