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Lemon Fritters
Shred two ounces of beef suet very finely, add a dessert-spoonful of flour, three ounces of fine bread-crumbs, the grated rind of a large lemon, and two table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly blended, stir in a table-spoonful of milk, two well-beaten eggs, and a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice. Fry the mixture in small quantities until lightly browned on each side; drain, and serve as hot as possible. Time, five or six minutes to fry. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A stiff, spoon-dropped fritter rather than a batter one — closer to a fried suet pudding than to anything dipped in batter. The mixture should hold its shape on the spoon.
- SuetShredded beef suet is sold ready-shredded and floured in the UK; elsewhere, buy raw beef suet from a butcher and grate it while very cold, or freeze it briefly first. Two ounces is about 55 g. Vegetable suet works and behaves much the same, though the flavour is flatter.
- Powdered sugarIn a British book of this date this means finely ground white sugar — caster sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornflour. Caster or ordinary granulated is the right substitute.
- BreadcrumbsThree ounces (about 85 g) of fine crumbs; 'fine bread-crumbs' in books of this period usually means dry sifted crumbs from stale white bread rather than fresh soft crumbs, and not the orange rasping sold as breadcrumbs today. Fresh crumbs will absorb the liquid differently and slacken the mixture.
- MeasuresA dessert-spoonful is roughly two teaspoons; tablespoons in Victorian British usage run a little larger than the modern 15 ml, but the difference is immaterial here. The mixture should be thick enough to drop in clumps rather than pour.
- FryingThe recipe does not say deep or shallow. Either works; shallow fat about half an inch deep is easiest to control for a mixture dropped in dessertspoonfuls, and in modern terms a moderately hot fat of roughly 350-375°F suits it, though the book gives no temperature. Five or six minutes turned once suggests a moderate rather than fierce heat, so that the suet has time to melt through before the outside colours.
- Yield and servingTwo or three people, as the original states, which means a handful of small fritters. Serve immediately; suet fritters turn heavy and greasy as they cool, which is why the original insists on "as hot as possible."
Fritters of this kind sit at the tail end of a long English tradition of sweet suet cookery — the same family of puddings, dumplings and boiled rolls that made beef fat a dessert ingredient rather than a savoury one. Suet was cheap, kept well in a cold larder, and gave richness where butter would have been an expense; a dish costing sixpence and feeding three was economical by the standards of the day. Lemon rind was a common flavouring in frugal British sweet dishes, doing work that vanilla or spice would do elsewhere.