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Peach Fritters
Remove the skins of the peaches and cut into quarters. Drop them in a little sweetened wine and let them remain for a few minutes; make a batter as for apricot fritters, and after dipping each piece in, fry a pretty brown. Large plums may be prepared in the same way.
A short recipe that assumes you have the apricot fritter batter earlier in the book. The rest is straightforward, provided the fruit is ripe but still firm and the fat is hot enough to set the coating before the peach starts to weep.
- The missing batterThe recipe leans on an apricot fritter batter given elsewhere in the book, which we do not have. A plain frying batter of the usual sort -- flour, an egg, a pinch of salt and enough milk or water to make a thick coating consistency, sometimes lightened with a stiffly beaten egg white folded in at the end -- will stand in. It should cling to a piece of fruit without running off.
- Choose the fruit carefullyFreestone peaches quarter cleanly; clingstones will fight you. Ripe but firm is the target — soft fruit collapses in the fat and pushes moisture through the batter.
- PeelingThirty seconds in boiling water and a plunge into cold water slips the skins off without cooking the flesh, which is faster than paring and wastes less.
- The wine soak"A few minutes" is literal: five to ten in a sweet white wine, Madeira or sherry with a spoonful of sugar. Longer and the fruit softens and picks up too much liquid, which makes the batter slide. Drain and pat the pieces dry before dipping.
- Frying fat and temperatureDeep fat at 365–375F. Below that the batter absorbs grease; much above and the outside colours before the fruit warms through. Two to three minutes gives the "pretty brown" called for.
- Draining and finishingLift onto paper, then dust with powdered sugar while still hot. Fritters do not hold — serve within a few minutes of leaving the pan.
- PlumsThe note about large plums holds, but plums need not be peeled; halve and stone them, and expect a slightly wetter interior.
- YieldFour medium peaches give about sixteen quarters, enough for four as a dessert course.
Fritters — fruit dipped in batter and fried — are among the oldest sweet dishes in English cookery, appearing in medieval manuscripts long before peaches were common in northern kitchens. Fritters were a standard way of using fruit that was ripe all at once. The brief soak in sweetened wine may reflect an older habit of "steeping" fruit in liqueur or fortified wine before frying, which flavoured the flesh and drew a little juice to the surface.