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Corn Fritters

Corn fritters are fried corn cakes made with eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, sugar, and lard.

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

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the corn from the ears and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  3. Mix until well combined.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard in a frying pan over medium‑high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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, fresh corn flavour in the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter and helps the fritters puff.
Lard
Fries the fritters, conducting heat and encouraging golden browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy and pale instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the fritters brown well and stay light inside.

“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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