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Apple, Peach, or Banana Fritters
1 Cupful Flour 1/3 Teaspoonful Salt 2/3 Cupful Milk or Water 2 Eggs 1/2 Teaspoonful Melted Snowdrift
This is a batter formula rather than a full recipe: the book gives proportions and leaves the method to the cook. Two of the quantities also look suspect, so read them with a critical eye before mixing.
- SnowdriftSnowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company (hydrogenated in its later formulations), the house brand this book was written to promote. Any neutral solid vegetable shortening substitutes directly, as does melted butter if you do not mind the flavour.
- The salt is almost certainly a misprintThe salt looks suspect -- A teaspoon and a half of salt to one cup of flour is roughly three times what a sweet fritter batter will comfortably carry. Period fritter batters of this size more often call for a quarter to half a teaspoon, so the printed figure may well be a misprint; reduce it unless you want a markedly salty batter.
- The fat quantity looks short tooHalf a teaspoon of melted shortening in a cup of flour does very little. A teaspoon or more of melted fat is common in fritter batters, and helps tenderise the crust and release it from the fat.
- Mixing orderWhisk the beaten eggs into the milk, stir into the sifted flour and salt, then add the melted fat last. The batter should coat a slice of fruit and cling without running off; thin with a spoonful of milk or thicken with flour as needed.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat at 365-375F. The printed formula gives no method or temperature, so the frying is left entirely to the cook; a thermometer removes the guesswork. Below 350F the fritters absorb fat, above 385F the outside colours before the fruit heats through.
- Preparing the fruitApples are pared, cored and cut in rings about a third of an inch thick; peaches are peeled and halved or quartered; bananas are cut in halves lengthwise or in thick diagonal slices. Dry the fruit on a towel or the batter will slide.
- Yield and servingThe batter is enough to coat roughly two apples' worth of rings or a few bananas; the book states no yield. Drain on paper, dust with powdered sugar and serve hot; they collapse and toughen within a few minutes of cooling.
The New Snowdrift Cook Book belongs to a large family of early twentieth-century promotional cookbooks issued by shortening and oil manufacturers, in this case the makers of Snowdrift, a cottonseed-oil shortening from the American South. Cottonseed was a by-product of cotton ginning, and its oil was refined into cooking fat on an industrial scale from the late nineteenth century onward; the free recipe booklet was the standard way of teaching cooks who knew lard and butter what to do with the new tin. Fritters were a natural showcase, since deep frying consumed the product by the pound and let the maker claim that the shortening stayed clean and neutral at high heat. The batter itself is much older than the brand, being the plain flour-egg-milk coating that English and American cookery had used for apple fritters since at least the eighteenth century; only the fat, and the confidence that a single formula would serve apple, peach and banana alike, mark it as modern.