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Raw Potato Fritters
Peel and grate eight large potatoes. Make a batter of three eggs and flour enough to work the potatoes sufficiently for frying. Salt to taste. After thoroughly mixing drop in boiling lard and fry until done. These are very nice when properly prepared.
A plain potato pancake batter of the sort that fills a page in almost every turn-of-the-century American vegetable chapter. The whole success of the dish is in how you handle the grated potato before it meets the egg.
- Wring the potatoes dryGrated raw potato throws a great deal of water within minutes, and a wet mixture will not brown or hold together. Squeeze the gratings hard in a towel, then let the liquid settle and stir the white starch that sinks to the bottom back into the potato.
- Work fast, or they greyRaw grated potato oxidises to a dull pink-grey almost immediately. Mix and cook straight away rather than holding the batter.
- "Flour enough"For eight large potatoes (roughly 3 lb peeled) and three eggs, start with about 1/2 cup flour and add only enough more to bind. Too much flour turns the fritters into gluey dumplings; the batter should just coat the shreds.
- Boiling lardMeaning deep fat at frying heat, around 360-375F, not literally boiling; the recipe itself gives no temperature. A cube of bread should brown in about a minute. Lard gives the traditional flavour here; a neutral oil works.
- Drop and flattenSpoonfuls dropped into deep fat will puff into irregular balls with a raw centre. Flatten each mound slightly as it goes in, keep them to about 2 tablespoons, and fry 3-4 minutes a side until the edges are dark and crisp.
- Don't crowd the panWet potato drops the fat temperature sharply. Four or five fritters at a time, letting the fat recover between batches, is the difference between crisp and greasy.
- Yield and servingAt about 2 tablespoons each, eight large potatoes make a great many fritters -- upwards of three dozen, enough for a large table. Salt them the moment they leave the fat and serve hot with apple sauce, sour cream, or alongside roast pork or sausage.
Fritters of raw grated potato belong to a family of dishes carried into American kitchens by German, Austrian and Jewish immigrants, where they appear variously as Kartoffelpuffer, Reibekuchen and latkes; by the late nineteenth century the form was familiar enough in English-language household books to be printed without comment or attribution, as it is here. The distinction the title insists on -- raw potato -- separates these from the potato cakes made of cold mashed or boiled leftovers that also appear in books of the period. Grating eight large potatoes by hand was real labour.