Corn Fritters

History

This dish is recorded as recipe No. 134, "Corn Fritters," in What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, dictated by Abby Fisher and printed in San Francisco in 1881. Fisher (born Abby Clifton, June 1831, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, to Abbie Clifton) grew up cooking in South Carolina plantation kitchens, where food historians say she honed the skills she later set down in this book. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. Unable to read or write, she dictated her recipes from more than thirty-five years of experience in Southern cooking, pickling, and preserving; the volume is described as the oldest known cookbook by a formerly enslaved person and as the second cookbook penned by an African-American woman in the U.S.. Her cooking had already been recognized publicly: the title page notes two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair in 1880 (for best pickles and sauces and best assortment of jellies and preserves) and a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879.

Fisher's method cuts the corn lightly from the cob — about half the grain — then scrapes the cob clean, binds the kernels with powdered crackers, beaten eggs, a little sifted flour and sweet milk, and drips the batter from the end of a spoon into hot lard or butter, frying it quick and brown. The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular preparation. It survives as Abby Fisher set it down, in her own name, from the Southern cooking she mastered and taught.

Ingredients

• 12 ears corn
• 3 eggs
• 0.5 teacupful powdered crackers
• 1 tablespoonful sifted flour
• 0.25 teacupful sweet milk
• lard or butter
• salt and seasoning

Instructions

1. Cut the corn lightly from the cob, removing about half the grain.
2. Scrape the other half of the corn clean off the cob with a knife.
3. Add the powdered crackers to the corn and beat together until light.
4. Beat the eggs light.
5. Add the beaten eggs to the corn mixture along with the sifted flour and sweet milk.
6. Season to taste and beat the whole mixture light.
7. Heat your lard or butter until very hot, hot enough to brown fritters in two minutes.
8. Drip the batter into the hot fat from off the end of a spoon.
9. Let the fritters fry quickly and brown.