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Corn Fritters (Can corn chopped fine cup)
1 can corn, chopped fine. 1 cup flour. 1 teaspoon baking powder. 2 eggs. 1 teaspoon sugar. 2 teaspoons salt. 1/4 teaspoon white pepper.
PROCESS: Add dry ingredients, sifted together, to corn; add yolks well beaten; then fold in whites beaten until stiff. Fry as griddle cakes; or dip a tablespoon into deep hot Cottolene, drain well, then take up a spoonful of the corn mixture, drop into hot Cottolene, pushing it off spoon into hot fat with a spatula. Fry a golden brown. Drain on brown paper and serve immediately.
A straightforward batter fritter, but the original assumes a larger can of corn than you will buy today and a shortening that no longer exists under that name.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by Fairbank & Co., which sponsored this book. Any neutral frying fat works: vegetable shortening, refined peanut or canola oil.
- The can of cornCans around 1900 commonly ran larger than today's 15 oz (a No. 2 can held roughly 20 oz), so you will need somewhat more than one modern can, well drained, to reach the intended proportion; the batter should be thick enough to hold on a spoon.
- Chopped finePulse the drained kernels a few times in a food processor rather than pureeing. You want broken kernels releasing their starch, not corn soup.
- SaltTwo teaspoons is heavy for one cup of flour, especially with canned corn that is already salted. Start with half a teaspoon and taste the batter before frying a test fritter.
- Fat temperatureThe original judges by eye. Hold the oil at 365-375F; below that the fritters absorb grease, above it the outside browns before the egg batter sets.
- Heating the spoonThe original does not explain the step; dipping the spoon in hot fat and draining it most likely keeps the batter from sticking so the fritter drops clean.
- Folded whitesBeyond the teaspoon of baking powder they supply most of the lift. Fold gently and fry promptly, as the batter loses air as it stands.
- DrainingBrown paper meant grocery bag paper. A wire rack over a sheet pan drains better and keeps the undersides from steaming soft.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 fritters, enough for four to six as a side dish with ham, chicken or roast pork.
52 Sunday Dinners was published as advertising for Cottolene, a cottonseed-oil shortening promoted from the 1890s as a cheaper, lighter substitute for lard, which explains why the frying fat is named by brand in a recipe that otherwise names nothing. Corn fritters themselves are older than the book and older than canned corn: fresh corn scraped from the cob, bound with egg and a little flour and fried, appears in American cookbooks through the nineteenth century, generally traced to Native American use of green corn adapted into colonial and later farmhouse cooking. What is new here is the can. Commercial corn canning expanded rapidly after the Civil War, and by 1900 a tin on the shelf meant a cook could put a summer dish on the table out of season.