Skip to main content
Main

Corn Fritters

A fried batter of corn, milk, egg, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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. Scrape the corn from the cobs.

  2. In a bowl, mix the corn, milk, beaten egg, salt, pepper, and baking powder.

  3. Add enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  4. If the fritters spread too much, add a little more flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Ensure the lard is deep enough to float the fritters.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into deep boiling lard.

  3. Fry until they puff up like doughnuts.

  4. Drain on paper or a folded napkin before serving.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 body, sweetness and tender bite inside the fritter.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it holds its shape while frying.
Egg
Binds the batter together and helps it set as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during frying, so the fritters puff up and turn light.
Milk
Moistens the batter and helps it brown in the hot lard.

The step that matters

Keep the lard deep and boiling. Fritters fried in deep, very hot fat cook quickly and seal on the outside, so they puff and brown instead of soaking up grease and spreading. If the fat is shallow or cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns heavy.

“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

Cream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipesCornmeal PuddingCornmeal Pudding32 recipes