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Mock Oysters

A fried corn batter resembling oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the corn into a deep dish.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then add to the corn.

  3. Mix in the flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into a frying pan with hot butter and lard.

  2. Fry until light 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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Corn
Provides the main bulk and sweet corn flavor of the fritters.
Egg
Binds the batter together and helps the fritters set while frying.
Wheat flour
Adds body to the batter so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the pan.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Frying the batter spoonfuls. The pan must be hot enough for the batter to set quickly on the outside. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb fat, turn greasy, and fall apart before browning.

“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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