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Corn Fritters
Prepare four ears of fresh corn by removing the outer husks and silks; boil, then drain well, cut the grains from the cobs to place in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, add one-fourth pound of sifted flour, two eggs and one-half pint of cold milk. Stir vigorously, but do not beat, with a wooden spoon for five minutes, when it will be sufficiently firm. Butter a fryingpan, place it on the fire, then take a ladle holding one gill, and with this put the preparation into the pan in twelve parts, being careful that they do not touch one another, and let them get a good golden color, cooking for four or five minutes on each side. Dress them on a folded napkin, and serve.
A plain batter fritter that depends entirely on how the batter is handled and how hot the pan is. Two of the original quantities need translating and one needs questioning.
- The hinge: stir, never beatFive minutes with a wooden spoon brings the batter to the point the recipe calls 'sufficiently firm' without whipping air into it. The distinction between stirring and beating is deliberate, not fussiness.
- UnitsOne-fourth pound of sifted flour is about 1 cup (115 g), and one-half pint of cold milk is 1 cup. A gill is half a cup.
- The ladle does not add upTwelve half-cup portions would be six cups of batter, more than these quantities produce. Treat the gill ladle as partly filled and portion by twelve: about 1/3 cup each.
- Boiling the cornFresh ears need only 3 to 5 minutes in boiling water before the kernels are cut off, and they must be drained and cooled well or the batter loosens. About 2 to 3 cups of kernels from four ears; frozen corn, thawed and patted dry, behaves the same.
- Butter alone will burnA buttered pan over a modern burner scorches before the fritters set. Use medium heat, a mix of butter and a neutral oil, and wipe and re-grease the pan between batches.
- TimingFour to five minutes a side suits a thick cake in a cool cast-iron pan. At medium heat, 2 to 3 minutes a side is usually enough for deep gold; go by color and by the edges setting.
- Draining and servingThe folded napkin is a serving conceit as much as a blotter. Drain on a rack or paper towel, then transfer. Twelve fritters serve four as a side dish, three as a light supper.
Corn fritters belong to the American kitchen's long habit of stretching green corn — sweet corn eaten at the milky stage — with flour, egg and milk, a treatment that shows up in nineteenth-century cookbooks under names like corn oysters and corn cakes. Oscar Tschirky's name is generally attached to a Waldorf collection that includes them, which is often taken as a reminder that the hotel's kitchen served plain American dishes alongside its French repertoire. The recipe also dates itself by assuming fresh ears in season: there is no canned or frozen option, and the corn must be boiled and stripped from the cob before anything else happens.