Put a large cupful of water in a saucepan; add 2 ounces of butter, ¼ teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of pulverized sugar. While boiling, stir in sifted flour until stiff and smooth. Remove from the stove and stir in the yolks of 4 eggs, one at a time, and the beaten whites; then fry by the teaspoonful in boiling lard until browned. Serve with a caramel sauce.
This is choux paste — the same dough as cream puffs — dropped into hot fat instead of baked. The original gives no flour quantity and no frying temperature, so both need supplying.
- The flourFor a cupful of water and 4 eggs, expect to use about 1 cup (125 g) sifted all-purpose flour, bearing in mind that "a large cupful" may mean somewhat more than 8 fl oz. The recipe stirs the flour in while the liquid boils; if you prefer, draw the pan off, beat the flour in smooth, then return it to medium heat and stir a minute or two until the paste pulls away from the sides and films the bottom. Drying the paste at this stage is what makes the puffs hollow rather than heavy.
- EggsCool the paste until it is warm rather than hot before beating in the yolks, or they will scramble. Fold the whipped whites in last and fry promptly; the aerated batter deflates on standing.
- "Pulverized sugar"Pulverized sugar in older American usage is sugar ground finer than granulated; superfine or caster sugar is the closest match. Confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch will work here too, since the quantity is only a tablespoon.
- Butter measure2 ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons, half a standard stick, 55 g.
- Frying fat and temperature"Boiling lard" means fat at about 350–360°F (175–180°C), well below any actual boiling point. Any neutral oil or shortening works if lard is not to hand. Too hot and the outsides brown before the centres set into hollow shells.
- Give them roomFry only six or eight teaspoonfuls at a time. The puffs swell to two or three times their size and often turn themselves over; if they do not, nudge them so both sides colour. Allow 4–5 minutes total — a puff pulled early collapses into a doughy knot.
- Caramel sauceThe book assumes you know one. Cook sugar to a deep amber, take it off the heat and add hot cream or water carefully, standing back from the steam, then stir smooth.
- YieldThe count depends entirely on the size of the spoonful; teaspoon-sized drops from this quantity will run to several dozen. They are best within an hour of frying and do not reheat well.
These are the Spanish buñuelos de viento — "wind fritters" — so called because they are mostly air inside, and traditionally eaten around All Saints' Day, though they turn up at fairs and festivals year-round. The technique is the same cooked flour-and-butter paste that French cooks call pâte à choux, and cookbooks of this period moved it freely between baking and the fat kettle; the difference between a cream puff, a beignet soufflé and a Spanish puff is largely the cooking medium. This entry comes from a once-popular genre: the day-by-day menu book, which gave the American housekeeper one dish for every date on the calendar and hung a nationality on each of them. The national labels are loose, and "Spanish" here signals the exotic rather than any particular regional source — but the fritter itself is genuine enough, and a Spanish cook would recognise it.