Corn Fritters
few grains cayenne 1 egg ½ cup milk 1 tablespoon olive oil Beat egg; add remaining ingredients. Drop by spoonfuls into deep fat. Fry six to eight minutes. Drain and serve hot. Canned corn may be used if fresh corn is not available.
A plain batter fritter of the sort filed under quick breads in early twentieth-century books. The batter proportions here are built around one egg and half a cup of milk, which suits roughly two cups of corn kernels or one standard can, drained.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; "deep fat" was judged by eye or by a bread-cube test. A modern equivalent is roughly 365-375F. Below that the fritters drink oil; above it the outside colors before the center of the batter sets.
- Frying timeSix to eight minutes is long for a spoon-dropped fritter. At the temperature above, tablespoon-sized drops are done in three to four minutes, turned once; longer and the interior dries out.
- Batter consistencyThe batter must be stiff enough to hold its shape as it leaves the spoon. If it slumps and threads in the fat, work in more flour a spoonful at a time before frying the rest.
- Canned cornUse a whole-kernel pack. Drain it well and blot it, since carried-over liquid thins the batter and spits in the fat. Cream-style corn is too wet for this batter.
- Olive oil in the batterA tablespoon of oil in the batter is there to tenderize, not to flavor. A strong extra-virgin will read as assertive here, so use a light oil if you want the corn forward.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than flat on paper so the underside does not steam soft. Hold in a 200F oven if you are frying in batches.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; it will depend on the quantity of corn used.
Corn fritters are often said to descend from the batter cookery of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, where green corn cut from the cob was stretched with egg, milk and flour into something between a pancake and a croquette; the technique itself is inseparable from maize, a crop European settlers took from Native American agriculture. Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer. The note permitting canned corn is a marker of the period: commercially canned sweet corn was cheap and widely stocked by the early 1900s, and cookbook writers had begun treating it as a legitimate substitute rather than an apology.