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Pineapple Fritters
Pare a pineapple with as little waste as possible. Cut it into thick slices, and place these in a shallow dish. Sprinkle two ounces of powdered and sifted sugar upon them, pour a wine-glassful of brandy, Curacoa, or maraschino over them, and let them soak for five hours. Make a frying batter as follows. Mix a salt-spoonful of salt with three-quarters of a pound of flour; add the well-whisked yolks of two eggs and two ounces of clarified butter, and pour in, very gradually, a little more than half a pint of lukewarm water or, if preferred, beer. Beat the mixture thoroughly whilst the water is being added, so that it may be quite smooth. This batter should be sufficiently thick to drop from the spoon. It should be made at the time that the slices are put into the liqueur, and then put aside, as it is best when made two or three hours before it is wanted. Ten minutes before it is to be used, add the whites of three eggs whisked to a firm froth. Dip the pieces of pineapple into the batter, and drop them into boiling lard. Turn them lightly in this until they are crisp and brown on both sides, then drain from the fat, and serve them quickly. They should be piled on a neatly-folded napkin, and have powdered sugar sifted over them. Time to fry, six or eight minutes. Probable cost, pineapples, when cheap, 1s. to 2s. each. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward French-style beignet, but the quantities are for a Victorian household and the frying time is long enough to burn the batter. Two things need attention: the batter's rest and the actual time in the fat.
- The hinge: rest the batterThe instruction to make the batter when the fruit goes into the liqueur and leave it two or three hours is not padding. The rest hydrates the flour and slackens the gluten, which is what gives a crisp rather than leathery coat. The whisked whites go in at the very end and must not be stirred flat.
- Frying timeSix to eight minutes is longer than slices this size need at a brisk frying heat. At 350-360F the fritters colour in about two to three minutes a side; judge by colour rather than by the clock.
- Fat temperature"Boiling lard" means lard at frying heat, not literally boiling. Aim for 350-360F and fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash. Any neutral high-smoke-point fat works; lard gives the crispest result.
- Wine-glassful and salt-spoonfulA wine-glass in this period is roughly 2 fl oz, about a quarter cup. A salt-spoon is about a quarter teaspoon. Two ounces of butter is 55 g, two ounces of sugar about a quarter cup.
- The half pintThis is an imperial half pint, 10 fl oz or 285 ml, and the recipe says "a little more than". With three-quarters of a pound of flour (340 g, roughly 2 3/4 cups) the batter will still be stiff, so add liquid until it drops thickly from the spoon rather than measuring blind.
- Batter quantityThree-quarters of a pound of flour makes far more batter than one pineapple needs. Halving or quartering the batter is sensible unless you are frying other fruit alongside.
- Preparing the fruitModern pineapples still need the eyes dug out after paring, and the woody core is best removed. Drain the slices well and pat them dry before battering, or the coating slides off.
- ServingThe folded napkin is a serving convention; a rack or paper-lined dish drains better. Serve immediately, dusted with icing sugar, and count on three or four portions as stated.
Fritters of this kind are the English rendering of the French beignets d'ananas, in which fruit is macerated in sugar and spirit, coated in a rested batter lightened with whisked whites, and fried. The detail that dates the page is the costing: "pineapples, when cheap, 1s. to 2s. each." Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a pineapple in Britain was a hothouse luxury, grown in heated pits, and is said to have been sometimes hired out as a table ornament rather than eaten. Faster steamship traffic and imports from the Azores and the West Indies brought the price down through the later nineteenth century, so the book can treat the fruit as an ordinary dessert ingredient while still noting that the price swings. The alternative of beer for water in the batter is an older British habit, sometimes linked to the days when small beer was a safer household liquid than water; whatever the origin, the carbonation does lighten the coating.