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Banana Fritters
1 cup bread flour. 1 tablespoon sugar. 2 teaspoons baking powder. 1/4 cup cream or milk. 1 egg beaten very lightly. 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 1/2 tablespoon Sherry wine.
PROCESS: Sift dry ingredients together twice. To beaten egg add cream and combine mixtures. Force bananas through a sieve and mix pulp with lemon juice and sherry wine; add to batter, beat thoroughly, and drop by tablespoonfuls into deep, hot Cottolene. Drain, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with
A straightforward drop fritter, but the ingredient list is missing the one thing the method depends on, and the frying fat no longer exists.
- The bananas are unquantifiedThe list gives no amount, though the process calls for sieved banana pulp. Two medium very ripe bananas, mashed or pushed through a sieve, gives roughly 3/4 cup and suits this quantity of batter; more than that and the fritters will not set.
- CottoleneA branded cottonseed-oil shortening blended with beef suet, sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company and long discontinued. Any neutral frying fat with a high smoke point stands in for it.
- Fat temperatureThe book says only "deep, hot." Period cookbooks commonly judged frying fat by a bread cube browning in about a minute, which corresponds roughly to 365-375F. Below that the fritters absorb fat; above, the outside colours before the centre cooks through.
- Bread flourPeriod bread flour was a strong, hard-wheat flour. All-purpose gives a lighter fritter here and is the better choice; if you use bread flour, mix only until combined.
- Sifting twiceNot fussiness. Early chemical baking powders were prone to clumping, and repeated sifting helped distribute them evenly through the flour. One pass through a sieve is enough with modern powder, but do not skip it.
- The sherryHalf a tablespoon is for aroma, not lift. Omit it if you prefer; add a few drops of vanilla in its place rather than more liquid.
- Testing one firstFry a single spoonful before committing the batch. Banana pulp varies enough in moisture that the batter may need another tablespoon of flour to hold its shape in the fat.
- Yield and servingAbout a dozen fritters, enough for four. The original sentence breaks off mid-suggestion, so what was to accompany them is unknown; a lemon or wine sauce would suit. Serve hot, as they turn heavy within minutes.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was compiled by Elizabeth O. Hiller, a Chicago cooking-school teacher, and published in the interest of Cottolene, the cottonseed-oil-and-suet shortening made by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which is why this fritter batter specifies a proprietary fat rather than simply "hot fat." The bananas are a marker of the same commercial moment: refrigerated steamers and rail cars had by the 1900s turned a luxury fruit into something a Midwestern household could buy cheaply and, crucially, buy soft and overripe. Fritters are often said to have been a common American treatment for fruit that had gone too far to serve raw.