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Fritters (Thin batter try in butter)
a thin batter; try in butter or nice, sweet lard, which should be very hot indeed, for the oranges are not good unless cooked quickly. When nice and brown put in a dish and sprinkle with powdered sugar. When properly prepared these are delicious. -Mrs. J. P. Hird.
The page is a fragment: the opening line and the ingredient list for the batter have been lost, and what survives begins mid-sentence with the frying. Enough remains to work from, but treat it as a method rather than a formula.
- "Try in butter""Try" here almost certainly means fry, whether a typesetter's slip or a spelling variant; "to try" also meant to render fat, but nothing is being rendered here — the oranges go into hot fat.
- What the batter wasThe original quantities are not recoverable from this page. A workable thin fritter batter would be about 1 cup flour, 1 egg, about 2/3 cup milk and a pinch of salt, sometimes with a teaspoon of baking powder — thin enough to coat a slice and run off.
- Fat temperature"Very hot indeed" is the only guide given. In modern terms that points to the usual deep-frying range, around 365-375F: much below and the batter drinks fat and the fruit steams; much above and the coating browns before the inside sets.
- Butter will not hold that heatWhole butter begins to scorch somewhere around 300-350F, which is one reason the lard the recipe also offers is the safer choice. Use lard, shortening or a neutral oil; clarified butter works if you want the flavor.
- Preparing the orangesPeel, remove all white pith and the membrane between segments, and cut into rounds or halved segments about half an inch thick. Blot them dry — surface juice makes the batter slide off and spits in the fat.
- Cook quickly, as instructedThis is the hinge of the recipe. Two to three minutes, turning once, is enough; longer and the citrus collapses into sour liquid inside a heavy shell.
- DrainingThe original sends them straight to a dish. Drain on paper or a rack for a moment first, then sugar them while still hot so the powdered sugar clings rather than sitting in a damp layer.
- YieldBatter in the reconstructed proportions above would coat roughly three to four medium oranges, enough for about four as a dessert. Fry in small batches so the fat stays hot.
Fruit fritters — apple, banana, peach, orange — were standard dessert fare in American households through the second half of the nineteenth century, when deep frying was said to be less of a special undertaking than it later became. Orange fritters in particular signal something about the period: fresh citrus had become a more reliable winter luxury in northern kitchens as Florida and California fruit moved by rail. The attribution to Mrs. J. P. Hird marks this as a contributed recipe, a format common in turn-of-the-century compilations: local women sent in what they actually cooked, in the shorthand they used at home, which is why the batter proportions are assumed rather than written and why the instruction that mattered most to her — cook them fast — is the part she spelled out.