History of the Corn Fritter
Where did they come from?
"Corn Planted by Western Scrub Jays" by Noël Zia Lee is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Early Days of Corn
Corn is a crop that has been harvested for tens of thousands of years. Even though corn has been around for so long, the information on how to properly process it was not widely available until the past few hundred years. When Christopher Columbus journeyed to the New World in 1493, he was shown a lot of new recipes, ingredients, and information by the Native Americans living there; One of these ingredients was corn! As he returned home to Europe, he brought some corn seeds with him. But unfortunately for the Europeans, he didn’t bring home the information on how to properly farm them.
"Day 137: 'Fresh baked bread'" by seanmfreese is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Corn in Europe
With corn entering Europe, people were excited and experimented with using it to make European breads. Years earlier, a technique of using deep-fried dough mixed with different ingredients was spreading through Europe (known now as ‘deep frying’). In all this excitement, it only made sense to try mixing this deep-fried dough with corn. Around this point in time was when the corn fritter we all know and love was invented!
Globalization of Corn
Globalization of Corn
There was one issue though, corn in Europe was rare. This was due to the missing information on how to effectively farm and process it. Luckily for corn fans, while the Europeans were missing these processes, corn was starting to thrive in the Atlantic! Throughout the next couple hundred years, corn and its associated processes ended up spreading across the world.
During this spread across the world, corn was brought to Southeast Asia by Portuguese and Spanish traders. Due to the tropical climate found in Indonesia, corn plants were thriving. The amount of water required was vastly less than wet rice, so this help popularize the ingredient. When it came to making recipes with the corn, palm oil was used to deep fry the corn. This is where a more savoury variation of the corn fritter was born.