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Mock Oysters of Corn

Mock oysters made from grated corn, flour, egg yolks, butter, and spices, fried until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,324 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mock Oysters of Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the corn as finely as possible.

  2. Mix the grated corn with flour, egg yolks, melted butter, pepper, and salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat equal parts of lard and butter in a frying pan until boiling hot.

  2. Drop a dessert spoonful of the mixture into the pan, shaping each to resemble an oyster and making them ½ inch thick.

  3. Fry until light brown and serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Young corn
Provides the bulk and sweet corn flavor of the fritters, as the grated base of the batter.
Egg yolks
Bind the grated corn into a cohesive batter and enrich it so the fritters hold their shape.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the grated corn and gives the batter enough body to hold its shape in the pan.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the batter and helps the fritters brown in the frying fat.
Lard
Provides a hot frying fat that browns the outside of the fritters quickly.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into very hot fat. The frying fat must be boiling hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, so the fritters hold their shape and do not absorb excess grease.

“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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