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Corn Oysters
Scrape sweet corn from the cob, or grate it. Take one coffeecup of corn and two eggs. Make a batter of a little milk and flour, seasoning with salt.
Make the batter sufficiently thick to take out with a spoon, and fry in butter. This recipe is enough for five persons.-Mrs William Edwards.
A nineteenth-century corn fritter with almost nothing in it but corn and egg. The proportions are loose by design, so the judgment calls fall to you.
- The coffeecupA coffeecup in American cookbooks of this period is usually reckoned at somewhat less than a standard measuring cup, though usage varies — treat it as roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of kernels, or about two ears of corn. Use the smaller end and the fritters hold together better.
- Scrape, don't just cutScraping means splitting the kernels and dragging the back of a knife down the cob to release the starchy milk. That liquid is what binds these; kernels cut off whole give you a looser batter that needs more flour.
- How much milk and flourThe original gives no quantities. Start with 2 tablespoons milk and 3 to 4 tablespoons flour for one cup of corn, then adjust until a spoonful mounds rather than runs. Too much flour and they turn into pancakes.
- Frying in butterButter alone scorches at the heat these need. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, gives you the flavor without black flecks. Medium heat, two to three minutes a side until set and browned.
- Corn to useFresh summer corn at its milky stage is the point of the recipe. Frozen kernels work but carry no starchy liquid, so expect to add an extra egg yolk or a spoonful more flour.
- SeasoningSalt is all the original asks for. Black pepper is a common addition in period fritter recipes, and a scrape of nutmeg will not feel out of place either.
- YieldFive servings by Mrs. Edwards's reckoning, which means about ten to twelve small fritters. Serve them straight from the pan; they go leathery as they cool and do not reheat well.
The name is traditionally traced to a matter of shape and texture rather than any seafood in the pan: a spoonful of egg-bound corn batter fried in fat browns into a lobed, crisp-edged lump about the size of a fried oyster, and bites with a similar soft interior. Corn oysters and corn fritters appear across American community and household cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and they belong to a broader family of "mock" dishes that stood in for costlier ingredients. The vagueness of the measurements is a sign of a recipe transcribed from a cook who worked by eye and expected her reader to do the same.