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Sweet Corn Fritters

A batter of sweet corn, flour, milk, eggs, and spices fried to a golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sweet Corn Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the fine wheat flour, milk, and beaten eggs to make a batter.

  2. Add the sweet corn, pepper, salt, and nutmeg to the batter and mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil or butter in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve with slices of lemon or tomato sauce.

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 + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the fritters as they cook.
Fine wheat flour
Provides structure so the batter holds its shape when fried.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Sweet corn
Adds sweetness and bursts of texture throughout the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying the batter spoonfuls. The oil must be hot before the batter goes in. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb excess oil and turn greasy, while the centres may stay raw. Hot oil sets the outside quickly so the fritters brown evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, egg, milk, wheat, flour, pepper, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, milk, wheat, flour, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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