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Corn Fritters

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the corn, eggs, baking powder, milk, and salt.

  2. Add flour gradually until you achieve a thin batter consistency.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the hot lard.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters rise and turn light.
Flour
Thickens the milk and egg mixture into a batter that holds its shape.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter spreads to a thin, workable consistency.
Corn
Provides the main body, sweetness and texture of the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy instead of crisp and golden. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the batter holds its shape and browns evenly.

“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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