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Kornlet Oysters, No. 2
To one can of kornlet add a teaspoonful of soda, two well-beaten eggs, salt and pepper, and enough fine cracker crumbs to hold the mixture together.
Drop from a spoon and cook as above.
RÉCHAUFFÉS AND OLLA-
A corn fritter of the kind once called a "mock oyster" — the name refers to the shape and the spooned-out drop, not to any shellfish. Two details need attention before you start: what kornlet was, and that teaspoonful of soda.
- KornletA branded canned product of around 1900: the pulp of green (immature) sweet corn scraped from the cob and packed without whole kernels. The nearest modern stand-in is a can of cream-style corn, drained of its thinnest liquid, or fresh corn cut and scraped from three or four ears.
- The soda is the weak pointA whole teaspoon of baking soda to one can of corn is far more than any leavening job requires, and with only two eggs and crumbs to buffer it the result tastes metallic and soapy. Soda turns up in other corn recipes of the period, apparently for colour and texture rather than lift. A scant quarter teaspoon does everything useful here; omitting it entirely costs you nothing.
- "Cook as above"The method is carried over from the preceding recipe, which is not reproduced on this page; assume the drops are fried. Work with a generous film of butter, give the spoonfuls room, and turn once when the underside is set and browned — two to three minutes a side.
- Cracker crumbsSoda-cracker or saltine crumbs, rolled fine, not the coarse dry breadcrumb of today. Add them a spoonful at a time and stop when the batter just holds a mound on the spoon; too many and the fritters turn dense and dry.
- SaltCream-style corn and cracker crumbs are both salted already. Season the mixture, fry one test drop, then adjust.
- YieldCan sizes varied, so this is approximate: expect roughly a dozen small fritters — enough for four as a savoury course, or two as a supper dish with bacon.
Kornlet belongs to the moment when canned goods were the newest convenience a middle-class pantry could show off: a proprietary can of scraped green-corn pulp, marketed as a shortcut to the flavour of corn cut fresh from the cob, and appearing by brand name in cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s much as we would now write "a can of tomatoes." The dish itself is older than the can. "Corn oysters," spooned into hot fat so they take on the ragged shape of a fried oyster, run back through nineteenth-century American cookery alongside mock oysters made from salsify — the vegetable still called oyster plant — and reflect a long habit of naming a cheap dish after the expensive thing it resembles.