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Lemon Fritters
One-fourth pound of eggs, one-half pound flour, one-fourth pound sugar (pulverized); beat the yolks well, add the flour and enough fresh milk to make a stiff batter (about a gill of milk); beat the whites stiff with the sugar, the juice of a lemon and some of the yellow peel grated off, or a spoon of extract of lemon. When ready to cook beat the whites well into the batter and proceed to cook. Have plenty of good lard, heated slowly; just as it begins to smoke, after bubbling, drop in by spoonfuls enough fritters to fill the vessel without crowding. The cold batter will lower the temperature of the fat sufficiently to keep it at proper cooking heat. The fritters will begin to brown very quickly, and should be turned with a wire spoon. If they begin to color dark brown check the heat immediately. If these directions are followed accurately, they may be lifted from the fat and laid upon a napkin or folded paper comparatively free from grease. Dust the fritters well with sugar and nutmeg, if agreeable. For supper eat them so, but for dinner some nice sauce should be served. Some persons substitute honey or maple syrup for sauce. Fritters bear a bad reputation, but when properly made, and eaten occasionally for a change, are quite as wholesome as many of the messes recommended as food for dyspeptics.
An egg-leavened batter fritter built on weights rather than cups, which is a mercy once you know what the weights come to. The whipped whites are the only lift in it, so how you fold and how hot the fat is decide everything.
- The weights in cupsOne-fourth pound of eggs is about 4 oz; if that means shelled egg it is roughly two large eggs plus a little of a third, though period books sometimes weighed eggs in the shell, which would be about two eggs. One-half pound flour is about 1¾ to 2 cups, and one-fourth pound pulverized sugar is about 1 cup of confectioners' sugar.
- A gill of milkA gill is half a cup. Add it gradually; flour absorbency varies and you want a batter stiff enough to hold its shape on the spoon.
- Pulverized sugarRoughly what is now sold as confectioners' or powdered sugar, though the period product was ground loaf sugar, coarser than modern powdered and without cornstarch. Granulated sugar will also beat into whites, but it dissolves more slowly.
- Fat temperature, measured"Just as it begins to smoke" is an unreliable cue; refined lard smokes somewhere around 370-390F, less refined lard lower. Use a thermometer and hold the fat at 360-375F. Neutral oil or shortening will do the job if lard is not on hand, though the flavour differs.
- Folding the whitesThe whites are beaten with the sugar, lemon juice and zest before going in. Fold them into the batter with a light hand immediately before frying and do not let the batter stand, or the fritters will fry dense.
- Turning and finishingThey cook fast -- the recipe says they begin to brown very quickly -- and want turning once with a wire spoon. Drain on a rack rather than folded paper if you want them crisp; paper traps steam under the fritter.
- Yield and servingThe batter makes roughly 18 to 20 spoon-sized fritters, enough for four to six. The "nice sauce" is unspecified; a sweet pudding sauce is the likeliest reading, and honey or maple syrup, as the book says, does the same work.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, first issued in 1877 and reprinted repeatedly through the 1880s, was compiled from contributions by practical housekeepers. Fritters in this period were a broad family: batter fried in deep fat with fruit, meat, corn or, as here, nothing but flavoring. The closing defense of them is worth reading twice. Deep-fried food was widely blamed for dyspepsia, the era's catch-all name for indigestion, and cookbook writers argued that fat properly heated is absorbed less by the food than fat heated badly, which is a fair enough observation about frying temperature dressed as a moral position.