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French Fritters, Batter For
Dissolve two ounces of butter in half a pint of warm milk; blend with it ten ounces of flour, and work it till it is quite smooth. Whisk the whites of two eggs; add them to the batter just before use, as the lightness will depend on this mainly. Season with salt, etc., if for vegetables; or sweeten with sugar if for frying fruit. Time, ten minutes to fry. Probable cost, 7d. for this quantity.
A plain frying batter lightened only by beaten egg white, meant to be mixed ahead and finished at the last moment. The whole recipe hinges on the final fold.
- Fold, do not stirThe whites go in immediately before frying and should be cut and folded through with a spatula until barely combined. Beating them in knocks out the air that is the batter's only leavening; a batter left standing after the whites are added will sink and fry heavy.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons; 10 oz of flour is roughly 2¼ cups, but weigh it if you can, since scooped flour can run well over the weight.
- Warm milk, not hotThe milk needs to be warm enough to melt the butter but not so hot it begins to cook the flour. Melt the butter in the milk, let it cool to blood heat, then beat in the flour so the batter is smooth without lumps.
- ConsistencyAs written this makes a thick coating batter that clings to apple rings or parsnip sticks. If it drops sluggishly from the spoon rather than in a ribbon, slacken it with a spoonful or two more milk before the whites go in.
- RestingThe flour-and-milk base benefits from half an hour's rest to hydrate and relax, though the recipe does not call for it. Rest the base, then whisk and fold the whites.
- The ten minutesThe ten minutes given is probably the working time for a batch rather than for a single fritter. By modern practice, at 350-375F fruit and vegetable fritters take about 3-4 minutes, turning once, until deep gold. Longer and the batter darkens before the filling is hot.
- Sweet or savouryFor fruit, a tablespoon of sugar is plenty; more and the batter colours too fast in the fat. For vegetables, half a teaspoon of salt and a grating of nutmeg or pepper.
- YieldEnough to coat about 1½ lb of prepared fruit or vegetables, or roughly 24 to 30 fritters.
Victorian cookery books generally treated batters as one master formula, seasoned sweet or savoury according to what was going into it. The costing in pence is characteristic of the household dictionaries of the 1870s onward, which sold themselves to mistresses running a kitchen on a budget and needing to know what a dish would come to before ordering it. Fritters earned their place in such books because they turned cheap seasonal fruit and leftover cooked vegetables into something that could be sent to table as a course of its own.