By John Fladd
This recipe came from what most of us call an “Old Church Lady Cookbook.” “Old” in this case refers to the cookbook. For a few decades in the mid-1900s, many small organizations made up mostly of women would raise money by publishing cookbooks with recipes contributed by the women themselves. These recipes often give less-than-precise instructions, like “cook until done” or “add a lump of bacon fat about the size of a hen’s egg.”
This particular recipe came from Mrs. Ralph E. Parmentier of Exeter. It is in her own handwriting, which is an adventure to decipher. “Pints,” “lumps” and “pinches” have been converted to more contemporary measurements of cups, grams and blobs.
Corn Fritters
2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 Tablespoon sour cream – the original recipe calls for sour milk. You find this in many old recipes; it’s there to add acidity to react with the baking soda and help fluff up the fritters as they fry. Sour cream, buttermilk, or plain Greek yogurt will work just as well.
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup (135 g) corn kernels
1 medium-spicy chili pepper – a serrano or Fresno – seeded and finely chopped
1⅓ cup (300 g) whole milk
Heat 2 to 3 inches of oil in a pot to 350°F.
Whisk the dry ingredients and sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Stir in the corn, chili and milk, until it is the consistency of thick pancake batter.
Use a one-tablespoon scoop to measure the batter for frying. If you don’t have one, use two spoons to drop blobs, each “the size of a walnut,” according to the original recipe.
Drop the blobs of batter into the hot oil, being careful not to crowd the pot. You hear this a lot in recipes. What it means is that each blob of dough that you drop into the hot oil will reduce its temperature. You want to keep the oil as close to 350 degrees as possible. That’s hot enough to cook the fritters all the way through, but not hot enough to burn them easily. If the oil is hot enough, the fritters will bubble in the hot oil. That is caused by steam forcing its way out of the cooking batter. As long as the steam is pushing itself out, very little oil can make its way into the fritter, which would make it greasy.
Fry each fritter until it is deeply golden brown on both sides. If you managed to drop fairly round blobs into the oil, weirdly, the fritters are likely to flip themselves over in the oil, as first one side becomes slightly lighter from losing water in the form of steam, then the other, as the top-heavy blob flops over, like a fat man standing up in a canoe. “They can’t order me around, Martha,” you can imagine the fritter saying belligerently to one of its fellows. “I’m a full-grown fritter and I’ll make my own decisions, than-you-very-much! Whoa!” Flip. Gurgle.
This process will take eight minutes or so. This is an excellent opportunity to listen to an audiobook. I would suggest Alfred Molina reading Treasure Island.
Drain the fritters on a paper towel or a brown paper grocery bag. Like most fried foods, they are best straight out of the oil, hot and crispy. Mrs. Parmentier suggests serving them with maple syrup, which is an excellent idea. I’d also add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
If you get distracted from the fritters by a shocking confession from a family member or something, and they cool off and lose their crispness, they can be restored easily in your air fryer.
Featured photo: Corn Fritters. Photo by John Fladd.
