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Orange Custard Fritters
Mix a quarter of a pound of flour very smoothly with three eggs and a pint of milk. Stir the batter over the fire for ten or fifteen minutes until it is quite smooth, then add a pinch of salt, two ounces of loaf sugar, which have been well rubbed upon the rinds of two large oranges, and the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. Spread the mixture out to cool, cut it into small oval pieces about an inch and a half long, and fry these lightly in hot fat. Drain them on blotting-paper, and serve them piled high on a napkin, with sifted sugar strewn thickly over them. Time, about eight minutes to fry the fritters. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
This is a fried custard rather than a batter fritter: the flour, milk and eggs are cooked to a stiff panada, chilled solid, cut and fried. Success depends entirely on how thick you get the mixture before it goes out to cool.
- The hinge: cook it much thicker than it soundsTen to fifteen minutes of stirring over the fire means cooking the paste until it pulls away from the pan in a mass, not merely until it thickens. A soft mixture will not hold its shape when cut and will burst in the fat.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of flour is about 115g. The pint is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz or just under 2.5 US cups. Two ounces of loaf sugar is about 55g, roughly a quarter cup.
- Loaf sugar rubbed on the rindLoaf sugar was hard cone sugar, broken into lumps; rubbing a lump over an orange until it turns orange and damp extracts the zest oil. Fine granulated sugar mixed with the finely grated zest of two oranges does the same job.
- Order of operationsThe three whole eggs go in with the flour and milk at the start; the three extra yolks are beaten in at the end. Pull the pan off the heat before adding them, or they will scramble in the hot paste.
- Spreading and coolingSpread about three quarters of an inch thick on an oiled tray or marble slab, press a sheet of buttered paper on the surface to stop a skin forming, and refrigerate at least two to three hours until firm right through. Cut the ovals only when cold.
- FryingFat at 350-360F (175-180C). Fry in small batches so the temperature holds. The stated eight minutes most likely covers the panful rather than each piece; each fritter needs roughly two to three minutes, turning once, until pale gold.
- Blotting-paperKitchen paper on a rack. Draining on a rack rather than flat keeps the undersides from steaming soft.
- Serving and yieldThree or four as written. Dust heavily with icing or caster sugar and serve at once; the contrast of crisp shell and soft interior is gone within a few minutes.
Fried custard of this kind belongs to a long European family of panada sweets - a flour-and-milk paste enriched with eggs, set firm, cut and fried - which appears in Italy as crema fritta and in France among the beignets, and which English books also record under names such as "custard fritters". It sits among the fritter recipes although it uses no batter coating at all: the fritter is its own body. The instruction to rub loaf sugar on the orange rind is a common method of the period, when sugar arrived as a hard cone that had to be broken up anyway, and the abrasive lump lifted the aromatic oil out of the peel without the bitter white pith. The costing in shillings and the confident "sufficient for three or four persons" are typical of the late-Victorian household dictionaries, which sold themselves to mistresses budgeting a kitchen as much as to cooks working in one.