Home › Vegetables › Corn and Celery Fritters
Corn and Celery Fritters
The combination of celery and corn in fritters is a good one. A cupful of the raw, pulped corn is to be mixed with the same amount of finely chopped celery, and to this add 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, ¼ of a teaspoonful of pepper, 2 eggs, the whites and yolks beaten separately, 3 tablespoonfuls of flour and 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder. Drop by spoonfuls into a little hot butter or butter and lard mixed, and fry quickly. Should the batter prove a trifle thin (as it may if the corn is very milky), add part or all of another spoonful of flour.
A pan-fried corn fritter stretched with celery, from the era when fresh corn was scraped rather than cut. The batter is barely more than a binder, so the corn's own moisture governs everything.
- Pulped corn"Raw, pulped corn" means splitting the kernels down the row with a knife tip and scraping the cob with the back of the blade so the milk and pulp come away, leaving the hulls behind. Two large ears give roughly a cup. Frozen kernels pulsed in a processor work but are drier and less sweet, so expect to hold back some flour.
- CeleryChop it very fine, finer than you think, or it stays crunchy against the soft corn and the fritters break apart when turned. Inner stalks and leaves are best; strip the strings from outer ribs.
- Beaten eggsWhites and yolks beaten separately is the point of the method. Fold the stiff whites in last with a light hand and fry straight away; the batter deflates within a few minutes of standing.
- The fat"A little hot butter or butter and lard mixed" points to shallow frying in a skillet, not deep fat, with maybe an eighth of an inch of fat. Butter alone will brown and burn at fritter heat, which is likely why lard is offered as a partner; a neutral oil with a spoonful of butter for flavour does the same job.
- Heat and timingMedium-high heat, about two minutes a side, until set and well browned. "Fry quickly" matters because slow cooking lets the fritters soak fat and go heavy before the centre sets.
- Adjusting the batterTest with one fritter before committing the bowl. If it spreads and refuses to hold an edge, add flour a spoonful at a time, but stop as soon as it holds; too much flour turns them into pancakes.
- YieldAbout a dozen small fritters, enough for three or four as a side dish. Serve immediately, as they soften as they sit.
Corn fritters belong to the long American tradition of turning green corn into supper, and books of cheap cookery leaned on them because a couple of ears, two eggs and a few spoonfuls of flour fed a family. Scraping the cob rather than cutting the kernels whole was common in nineteenth-century green-corn recipes, since the starchy milk was what bound the batter and the tough hulls were left behind on the cob. The celery here is doing economical work: it bulks out the corn and adds a savoury note the sweet kernels lack. Recipes of this kind belong to the season when corn was cheap and plentiful and cooks were looking for one more way to serve it.