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Currant Fritters
Whisk three eggs thoroughly, and mix with them gradually six table-spoonfuls of fine flour and a pinch of salt. Beat the mixture until quite smooth, then add one pint of milk. Put a little lard or dripping into a frying-pan. When quite hot, stir a handful of picked and dried currants into the batter, and drop it into the pan in fritters about the size of a penny bun. Three or four may be cooked together, but they must be kept apart. When lightly browned on one side turn them over on the other. Drain the fat from them, and serve them on a hot napkin. Time to fry, a few minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for four persons.
A plain drop-fritter batter from the era when "fritter" covered anything spooned into hot fat. The one thing to sort out before you start is the batter's thickness, which as written will not hold a shape.
- The batter ratio is the hingeSix tablespoons of flour to three eggs and an imperial pint of milk gives something closer to pancake batter than fritter batter, and it will spread and run rather than sit up in rounds the size of a bun. Hold back most of the milk, beat the eggs and flour to a smooth thick paste, then let it down only until it drops thickly from the spoon — roughly the consistency of very heavy cream.
- A pint means 20 fl ozCassell's is British, so the pint is imperial: 20 fluid ounces, or about 2 1/2 US cups. Another reason to add it by degrees rather than all at once.
- Currants are the dried kindThese are Zante currants — small dried grapes, sold in the US as "currants" in the baking aisle. Not fresh red or black currants, which would flood the batter with juice.
- "Picked and dried"Nineteenth-century currants arrived gritty and stalky and had to be rubbed in flour, sorted and dried on a cloth. Modern packaged currants need only a rinse if they look dusty, and a thorough pat dry so the batter clings.
- Fat and heatLard or beef dripping, shallow in the pan; the recipe says only 'a little', and 'when quite hot'. Too hot and the outside colours before the centre sets; too cool and the fritters drink fat. Three or four at a time, as directed — crowding drops the temperature.
- Serve them on a hot napkin"Serve them on a hot napkin" -- A folded linen napkin on a warmed dish, which absorbs the last of the fat; serving fried dishes on a napkin was a common Victorian presentation. A rack over a warm oven does the same job, and the fritters do not improve with standing.
- There is no sugar in the batterAnd no accompaniment is specified, so any sweetness has to be added at the table: dust with caster sugar and offer lemon wedges, or a spoonful of warmed jam.
- Yield and costFour servings, as stated; the batter should give something over a dozen fritters of the size described. The "8d." is eightpence in pre-decimal money — Cassell's gives a "probable cost" and a "sufficient for" line with its recipes, as an aid to household budgeting.
Fritters of this sort are among the oldest sweet dishes in the English repertoire — batter, fat, a pan — and in Cassell's they sit in a long alphabetical run of variations: apple, orange, rice, potato, currant. The currant version belongs to the frugal end of that list, using a handful of dried fruit from the store cupboard rather than anything seasonal. The comparison to "a penny bun" is a period measure of size rather than a recipe reference: penny buns were a familiar bakery item, small and round, and readers would have known roughly what was meant. The costing in pence, likewise, reflects the book's purpose as a manual for households running on a fixed weekly sum for food.