Home › The Principles of Cookery › German Frying Batter
German Frying Batter
Thoroughly mix six ounces of flour with one ounce of melted, but not oiled, butter, the yolk of an egg, and two table-spoonfuls of water. Add a pinch of salt, and, very gradually, a quarter of a pint of mild ale. Beat the ingredients with a wooden spoon till they are smoothly blended. This batter is better for being made two or three hours before it is wanted. Just before using, add the white of an egg, beaten to a stiff froth. Time, twenty minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 3d. for this quantity. Sufficient for about one and a half or two pounds of meat or vegetables.
A classic beer batter, thick enough to cling and lightened at the last moment with beaten egg white. The two instructions that matter are the resting period and the folding, and neither can be hurried.
- Melted but not oiled"Oiled" butter is butter that has been heated until the emulsion breaks and the fat separates out clear. Melt it gently over low heat and let it cool to barely warm before it goes in, or it will begin to cook the yolk.
- Imperial measuresA quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, a little under two-thirds of a US cup. Six ounces of flour is roughly 1 1/3 cups scooped and levelled; weighing is more reliable, as this batter is sensitive to a heavy hand with the flour.
- Mild aleIn a Victorian British kitchen this meant a lightly hopped, faintly sweet draught ale, not the dark "mild" of later decades and not a bitter. Any low-hop pale ale or lager works; a heavily hopped IPA will leave a bitter edge in the crust.
- The restTwo or three hours standing is not optional dressing. It lets the flour hydrate fully and the gluten relax, which gives a batter that coats evenly and fries crisp rather than tough. Refrigerate it if the kitchen is warm.
- Folding the whiteBeat the white to soft-stiff peaks and fold it in with a spatula in two additions immediately before frying. Stirring it in, or letting the finished batter stand, collapses the air and loses the lightness the whole method is built around.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe assumes you know your fat. Use a neutral oil at 350-375F: below that the batter drinks oil, above it the crust colours before the interior sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- YieldEnough to coat 1 1/2 to 2 lb of prepared food, which in practice is fritters or fried fish for four to six. Ingredients should be dry and lightly floured before dipping, or the batter slides off.
Frying batters were catalogued by nationality in nineteenth-century English cookery books much as sauces were, and "German" here may well signal the beer rather than any particular dish: an ale-based batter as distinct from the milk-and-egg batters used for pancakes or the plain water-and-flour coating for fish. Ale in batter is often said to have been valued for two reasons at once, the carbonation giving lift and the residual sugars and yeast helping the crust brown, which would explain why the trick outlived the era of home-brewed household beer and survives in modern beer batter. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, arranged alphabetically as a dictionary, gives a costing of threepence for a quantity sufficient for two pounds of food, which is typical of the book's habit of pricing every preparation.