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Corn Oysters
Six ears of new corn; grate and scrape them well; beat one egg very light; add one tablespoonful of flour, one of sweet cream, pepper and salt to taste. Mix well together. Make into small pats the size of an oyster. Fry them in hot butter till a light brown. -Mrs. L. McKnight.
A simple fritter batter held together almost entirely by the corn's own starch, so the state of the corn matters more than anything else in the list.
- "New corn" is the hingeThis works only with fresh, milky sweet corn at the stage where a scored kernel squirts. Older or starchy corn gives a dry batter that will not bind, and frozen kernels release almost no milk at all.
- Grate and scrapeCut down each row of kernels with a knife tip to split them, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade to press out the pulp and milk. Six ears yields roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of pulp, depending on the size of the ears.
- One tablespoon of flour is not a typoThe batter is meant to be loose and custardy, thickened by corn starch and egg rather than flour. If it will not hold a shape at all, add flour a teaspoon at a time; more than two or three turns them into pancakes.
- Sweet creamMeans fresh cream as opposed to soured or cultured cream; the term says nothing about fat content. Heavy or whipping cream is a workable substitute.
- "The size of an oyster"About a rounded tablespoon each, dropped and flattened slightly in the pan, roughly two inches across. The name refers to the shape and the soft interior, not to any seafood in the dish.
- FryingButter over medium heat, around 350F; hotter and the milk solids blacken before the centre sets. Two to three minutes a side. Clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix gives more room for error.
- YieldSix ears makes about 20 to 24 small fritters, enough for four to six as a side. They are best straight from the pan and go soggy if held.
Corn oysters, sometimes called mock oysters or corn fritters, turn up across nineteenth-century American cookbooks and belong to a broad family of "mock" dishes in which a cheap ingredient stands in for a costly or seasonal one. Oysters were plentiful and beloved on the eastern seaboard, and the name is generally taken as a nod to the resemblance in size, shape and soft texture rather than any attempt to fool the eater. The recipe also reflects how green corn was handled before home freezing: it was an intensely seasonal food, good for a few weeks in late summer, and worth using while it was still milky. The attribution to Mrs. L. McKnight is typical of community compilations, which gathered contributions from named local cooks and printed them largely as submitted, brief measurements and all.