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Preserve

Corn Patties

Corn patties are fried cakes made from grated green corn, eggs, milk, flour, and fried in lard and butter.

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

Corn Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the green corn using a coarse grater.

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated corn, eggs, and milk.

  3. Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Fry

  1. In a skillet, heat a mixture of lard and butter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot fat 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Green corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the patties.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the patties set when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the patties hold their shape in the pan.
Lard and butter
Conduct heat for frying and encourage golden browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls of batter in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the patties absorb excess oil and turn greasy and pale. Hot fat sears the outside quickly, forming a crust that holds the batter together and browns it 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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