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Wine Fritters
Beat sıx eggs light, and gradually stir into them six tablespoonfuls of sweet wine and six tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Have ready a sufficient number of large, fresh milk biscuits, split in two, soak in a bowl of sweet wine for about five minutes, and drain on a sieve. Dip each piece in the batter and fry them in hot butter until a light brown. When done sift powdered sugar over them and serve in a napkin.
This is a wine-soaked version of pain perdu: the batter is nothing but eggs, wine and sugar, so it clings thinly and browns fast. Everything depends on the bread being soft enough to drink the wine but firm enough to survive the pan.
- The hinge: don't oversoakThe recipe's five minutes suits a split roll; anything airier will want less. Once the crumb is saturated through it collapses when lifted and falls apart in the fat. Drain cut side down on the sieve until no wine runs.
- "Milk biscuits"Not a cookie; in books of this period the name generally covers a small soft roll made with milk, usually plain to barely sweet, often yeast-raised. Brioche rolls, Portuguese sweet rolls or good soft dinner rolls a day old are the nearest thing on a modern shelf.
- "Sweet wine"Most likely a fortified dessert wine: Madeira, cream sherry, Marsala or a sweet Muscat, though a sweet unfortified white would also answer the description. A dry table wine gives a thin, sour result. Figure on a cup or more for the soaking bowl, plus the six tablespoons for the batter.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this vintage the phrase most often means sugar pounded or crushed fine rather than the modern boxed confectioners' sugar; for both the batter and the finishing dusting, confectioners' sugar will serve.
- Frying in butterWhole butter at fritter heat will brown and then burn before the second batch is done. Use clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, and hold the pan around 350F. Wipe out and refresh the fat between batches, since the sugar in the wine scorches.
- The batter is thinSix eggs with six tablespoons each of wine and sugar make a loose custard, not a coating batter. Let each piece drip a moment after dipping and lay it away from you into the fat; expect a lacy edge rather than a smooth shell.
- "Serve in a napkin"A folded linen napkin laid in the serving dish, with the fritters piled inside and the corners turned over them. It blots the frying fat and keeps them warm to the table. A paper-lined warm dish does the same work.
- YieldThe recipe leaves the number of rolls open. Six eggs and the wine should coat roughly a dozen split rolls, or twenty-four halves, giving something like six to eight servings as a dessert. The batter does not keep; make only what will be fried at once.
- Filed under VegetablesThese are a sweet course, served hot at the end of a meal.
Fried bread soaked in wine or milk is one of the oldest sweets in the European repertoire, running from medieval pain perdu — literally lost bread, rescued from staleness — through Spanish torrijas soaked in wine and honey to the eggy fritters of Victorian and Edwardian household books. Sweet fortified wine, Madeira and sherry above all, was a standard American pantry item through the nineteenth century, used as freely in puddings and sauces as in glasses. Recipes calling for a bowl of sweet wine to soak bread in read as a survival from an earlier style of dessert. The instruction to serve in a napkin is equally of its period: a folded linen cloth in the dish was a common way of presenting anything fried, and it appears in contemporary books without explanation.