Skip to main content
Dessert

Corn Oysters

A fried corn batter with crackers and eggs, served as a savory snack.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine grated corn, eggs, crushed crackers, melted butter, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Add sweet milk until the mixture is the right consistency to drop from a spoon.

Fry

  1. Heat butter in a saucepan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot butter.

  3. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the fritters hold their shape while frying.
Crushed crackers
Absorb moisture and add starch so the batter holds together and sets.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown during frying.
Sweet milk
Loosens the batter to a spoonable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Adjust the milk to a drop-from-spoon consistency. Too much milk makes the batter thin and it spreads and falls apart in the pan, while too little leaves it stiff and dense. The crackers and eggs set as they cook, so the batter needs the right moisture before frying to keep spoonfuls intact.

“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.

More corn fritters recipes

Green 46Sweet 7 See all 396 →

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes