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Plain Fritters
One pint of fresh sweet milk, two eggs, beaten separately, one-half teaspoonful of soda, one teaspoonful of cream of tartar (or use baking powder), add a little salt. Fry in hot lard; drop in a crust of bread to soak the brown part of lard.
A late-Victorian batter recipe written for cooks who already knew what a fritter batter looked like — which is why the most important ingredient never appears on the page.
- The flour is missingNo quantity of flour is given, and none can be reliably inferred from the original. A pint of milk with two eggs would conventionally take somewhere between three and four cups of flour for a batter thick enough to drop and hold its shape, but that is a reconstruction, not the author's measurement. Add flour gradually until the batter falls from the spoon in a heavy ribbon rather than a stream.
- Soda and cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon of soda to a teaspoon of cream of tartar is the standard 1:2 ratio, which is simply homemade baking powder. If you take the recipe's own alternative, about two teaspoons of commercial baking powder does the same work. Mix the acid into the dry flour and the soda in last, then fry promptly — the lift starts as soon as the batter is wet.
- Eggs beaten separatelyConventionally this means the yolks beaten into the milk and the whites whipped and folded in at the end, though the recipe does not say to what stage or in what order. It gives a lighter fritter than a straight batter; skipping it produces something closer to a pancake dropped in fat.
- Fat and temperatureLard was a common frying fat and still works well; any neutral oil is a direct substitute. The recipe says only "hot"; modern deep-frying practice puts that in the region of 360-375F. Cooler than that and the fritters drink fat; hotter and the outside colours before the centre sets.
- The crust of breadDropping in a crust to "soak the brown part" is a real technique — the bread collects loose crumbs and scorched batter that would otherwise burn and taint the fat. Fish it out when it darkens and add a fresh piece. A fine skimmer does the same job with less ceremony.
- Why it sits under VegetablesA plain batter of this kind was the base for corn, salsify, parsnip or apple fritters. Fold in a cup or so of cooked, well-drained vegetable before frying; on its own the batter yields a plain fritter usually served with syrup or sugar.
- YieldA pint of milk makes a large batch, but with no flour quantity on the page the yield can only be estimated; expect enough for six or more. They do not keep; they collapse and toughen within minutes of leaving the fat.
Fritters ran right through nineteenth-century American cookery as the household answer to a fat kettle and a leftover vegetable, and "plain" here does real work: it marks the batter as the neutral base to which corn, salsify, apple or oyster would be added, rather than a finished dish. The soda-and-cream-of-tartar pairing dates the recipe to the era when cooks were still accustomed to compounding their own leavening, even as tinned baking powder made the practice unnecessary.