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Green-corn Fritters

A fried batter of corn kernels, eggs, milk, and flour, cooked in lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Green-corn Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

  2. Gradually add the corn, milk, and melted butter.

  3. Stir in enough flour to hold the mixture together, then add baking powder and salt.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a kettle until hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot fat and fry until light brown.

  3. Alternatively, fry in a mix of butter and lard like fried eggs.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 fat.
Corn kernels
Provide the main body, sweetness and tender texture of the fritters.
All-purpose flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold together around the corn.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the fritters puff lightly.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the batter and, with lard, to the frying fat.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and becomes greasy instead of crisping quickly. Frying until light brown sets the outside while the inside cooks through.

“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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