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Corn Oysters
To one quart grated corn add three eggs and three or four grated crackers, beat well and season with pepper and salt; have ready in skillet butter and lard or beef-drippings in equal proportions, hot but not scorching; drop in little cakes about the size of an oyster (for this purpose using a tea-spoon); when brown turn and fry on the other side, watching constantly for fear of burning. If the fat is just the right heat, the oysters will be light and delicious, but if not, heavy and "soggy." Serve hot and keep dish well covered. It is better to beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth and add just before frying. - Mrs. V. G. Hush, Minneapolis, Minn.
A fritter batter held together by egg and cracker crumb rather than flour, so its success rests almost entirely on the temperature of the fat. Everything else is forgiving.
- Fat temperature is the hinge"hot but not scorching" gives no number, and the judgement is left to the cook; fat in the region of 350-365F behaves as described. Below that the cakes absorb fat and turn soggy exactly as the recipe warns; much above it and the outside browns before the egg sets. Test with a spoonful of batter: it should sizzle steadily and take roughly a minute per side.
- A quart of grated cornThat is about 4 cups of pulp, which takes 8 to 10 ears of sweet corn. Grate on the coarse side of a box grater or split the kernels lengthwise with a knife and scrape the cob to release the milky interior, which is what binds the batter.
- Grated crackersNineteenth-century soda or water crackers, grated fine. Three or four might yield something in the region of 1/2 to 3/4 cup of crumbs, though cracker sizes varied a good deal; unsalted saltines or plain water biscuits are the closest modern stand-in. Add them gradually, since corn varies in wetness.
- Butter and lard in equal proportionsThe lard or beef dripping dilutes the milk solids in the butter that would otherwise scorch, so the cakes can brown without the fat burning. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, does the same job.
- Beating the whitesThe closing note is the better method, not an afterthought. Beat the yolks into the corn, whip the whites to the "stiff froth" the recipe asks for, and fold them in immediately before the first spoonful goes into the pan; the batter loses lift as it stands.
- Keeping them coveredCovering the serving dish keeps the cakes hot but steams the crust soft. If you want them crisp, hold them uncovered on a rack in a 200F oven instead.
- YieldTeaspoon-sized cakes from this quantity give several dozen fritters, depending on how generously the spoon is filled; enough for six to eight at breakfast or as a side dish.
The name is often taken as descriptive rather than deceptive: the cakes are dropped by the teaspoon so each comes out about the size and shape of a shucked oyster, and they were served in the same way, hot and heaped on a covered dish. Recipes of this kind circulate through American cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward under both "corn oysters" and "mock oysters," and they belong to a broad family of Victorian mock dishes in which a cheap ingredient takes the form of a costly one. Fresh oysters were in fact abundant and inexpensive in the coastal cities of the period, but inland, and particularly in the upper Midwest where this contributor was writing, they arrived only barreled, canned or hauled by rail. Buckeye Cookery, issued in Minneapolis in 1877, was assembled from signed contributions of exactly this sort, and green corn at the height of summer was one thing a Minneapolis kitchen never lacked.