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Orange Fritters
Peel the oranges and slice thin, then dip in a batter made of one egg, one heaping tablespoonful of sugar, a little milk, and flour enough to make
The text breaks off mid-sentence, so the batter proportions are incomplete and no frying instruction survives. What is here is workable if you treat it as a thin coating batter and supply the frying yourself.
- The batter is unfinishedThe line ends at "flour enough to make" — presumably "a batter" or "a stiff batter." One egg, a heaping tablespoon of sugar and a little milk will take roughly half a cup of flour before it coats the back of a spoon. Add the milk last and in small amounts; oranges shed juice and thin the batter as they sit.
- Slicing and dryingPeel down to the flesh, removing all the white pith, and slice crosswise about a quarter inch thick. Blot the slices dry on a towel before dipping or the batter will slide off in the fat.
- Oranges have changedMany oranges of the period were seedy, and pips would have been picked out by hand; seedless navels, though already grown commercially by this date, are now the default and hold together better in slices. Blood oranges look striking but bleed into the batter.
- Frying, since the book does not sayDeep fat at 365–375F, a few slices at a time, turning once, about two minutes total until the coating is set and pale gold. Any hotter and the sugar in the batter scorches before the interior heats through.
- FinishingDrain on paper and dust with powdered sugar while still hot. Period cookbooks often sent fritters to table with a wine or lemon sauce, though this one gives none.
- YieldOne egg's worth of batter coats about two large oranges — roughly sixteen to twenty slices, enough for four as a sweet.
- The section headingFiled here under Vegetables. This may be a misplacement, or simply a consequence of the book grouping fritters of all kinds together; either way it reads as a dessert or a sweet side rather than a vegetable dish.
Fritters occupy an enormous amount of space in American household cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s, in part because a kettle of deep fat was already in use in many kitchens for doughnuts and croquettes, and in part because almost anything could be dipped in a one-egg batter and made to look like a course. Oranges reached inland American tables in quantity only after refrigerated rail cars and the Florida and California groves made them a year-round rather than a Christmas-stocking fruit, and cookbooks of this period respond by scattering orange recipes through chapters that had no room for them a generation earlier. The batter itself — one egg, sugar, milk, "flour enough" — is a common nineteenth-century formula, given by proportion rather than measurement because the cook was expected to judge consistency by eye. Fannie Farmer's insistence on level, measured cups was published in 1896 and had not yet worked its way through the trade.