Corn fritter
Corn fritters
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| Main ingredients | Corn, egg, flour, milk and butter |
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Corn fritters are fritters made of corn. Originating in Native American cuisine, they are a traditional sweet and savory snack in the Southern United States, as well as Indonesia where they are known as perkedel jagung or bakwan jagung.
Native Americans had been using ground corn (maize) as food for thousands of years before European explorers arrived in the New World. Corn-based products, such as corn flatbread, arepa and cornbread were staple foods in Pre-Columbian Americas. Native Americans did not use deep frying techniques, however, which require ample supplies of cooking oil as well as equipment in which the oil can be heated to high temperatures.
European settlers learned recipes and processes for corn dishes from Native Americans, and soon devised their own cornmeal-based variations of European breads made from grains available on that continent. The corn fritter probably was invented in the Southern United States, whose traditional cuisine contains a lot of deep fried foods, none more famous perhaps than Southern fried chicken.
On the other side of the world, maize seeds from the Americas were introduced into Southeast Asia in the late 16th century through Spanish and Portuguese traders. The plant thrived in the tropical climate of Indonesia, and soon became a staple food plant in drier areas of central and southeastern Indonesia, since it requires much less water than wet rice. Coconut and palm oil have been a essential elements of Indonesian cuisine for centuries. The deep fried technique using palm oil was probably borrowed from Portuguese colonists; and Indonesia has its own type of corn fritter, called perkedel jagung or bakwan jagung.
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Wikipedia