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Apricot Fritters
6 apricots, 1/2 pint syrup, half lemon, frying-batter, Crisco, and vanilla sauce.
Select firm, ripe apricots, or preserved ones can be used, cut them in halves, and take out stones. Stew them gently in syrup with grated rind of 1/2 lemon. When they are tender, drain well, and let them cool. Have ready some frying-batter, dip apricots into it, then fry in plenty of hot Crisco. When a nice golden color, take them up, drain on paper, dish up on a napkin and serve with vanilla sauce.
A simple fruit fritter that depends on two things: the fruit being dry when it meets the batter, and the fat being hot enough to set that batter instantly.
- Dry the fruitThis is the hinge. Stewed apricot halves hold a great deal of syrup, and wet fruit will shed its batter in the fat. Drain them cut side down on a rack, blot with a towel, and let them cool completely before dipping.
- The syrupHalf a pint is one cup. A light poaching syrup of one cup water to about half a cup sugar is right; the recipe assumes you already have syrup on hand, as a household with preserves would.
- Preserved apricotsIf you use canned or bottled apricots, skip the stewing entirely. Warm them briefly in their own syrup with the lemon rind if you like, then drain and cool. They are already tender and will collapse with further cooking.
- CriscoThe book was published to promote it. Any neutral solid or liquid frying fat works. You want a depth of at least two inches, held at 370-375F; below that the batter absorbs fat, above it the outside colors before the fruit heats.
- Frying batterThe original assumes a standard flour-and-egg batter from elsewhere in the book. A thin coating batter of about 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and enough milk or water to reach heavy-cream consistency is in keeping. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- Vanilla sauceIn this period that means a pouring custard: milk, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla, stirred to nappe and never boiled, or a lighter cornstarch-thickened version. Serve it warm alongside rather than over, so the crust stays crisp.
- Dishing on a napkinA folded linen napkin on the serving plate absorbs residual fat after the fritters have already been drained on paper. It is still effective, though a warm rack works better if you are frying in batches.
- YieldSix apricots give twelve halves, enough for three or four as a dessert course. Fry and serve immediately; fritters do not hold.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks how to use a new product. Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, was introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, and books like this one were written to persuade households that it could replace lard and butter in every application, deep frying included. Hence the appearance of Crisco in the ingredient line of a recipe that otherwise has nothing to do with it. Fruit fritters themselves are far older, an economical way to turn a few pieces of fruit into a hot pudding, and apricots were a natural choice for a book of this date because they were widely available preserved in syrup when the fresh season had passed.