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Wonders
These cakes are made thus: Take one table-spoonful of butter, one of sugar, one egg, and a little spice. Mix stiff with flour, and boil in lard.
A single-egg fried cake written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing. Almost everything but the egg needs interpreting.
- "Boil in lard" means deep-fryThe fat should be deep enough for the cakes to float and held at 365-375F. Below that they soak; much above it they brown before the middle sets.
- Flour is the missing measurement"Mix stiff with flour" against one egg and a tablespoon each of butter and sugar works out to roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of all-purpose flour, added until the dough holds a shape and no longer sticks to the hands. The original gives no figure and none should be invented.
- This is a very small batchOne egg makes about a dozen small cakes rolled thin. Scale up in whole eggs rather than trying to split one.
- Roll thin and cutNo leavening is called for, so the cakes rise only from steam. Roll to about 1/8 inch and cut into strips, diamonds or rings; thick pieces stay doughy at the centre.
- "A little spice"The recipe does not say which. In books of this period the spice for fried cakes is most often grated nutmeg, sometimes with cinnamon or mace. A quarter-teaspoon total suits this quantity.
- Fat, then and nowLard fries beautifully and gives the flavour the recipe expects. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point behaves the same way, and a shallow pan with two inches of fat is sufficient.
- TimingAbout a minute a side, turning once when the underside is deep gold. Drain on paper; a dusting of sugar while still warm is a common finish for such cakes, though the recipe does not call for it.
"Wonders" is one of a family of names -- crullers, olykoeks, doughnuts, fasnachts -- given to sweetened dough fried in deep fat. Its presence in a compendium of household cookery, tucked among the plainer sweet things, reflects how cheap the dish was: an egg, a spoonful each of butter and sugar, flour to bind, and a pot of lard. The terseness of the instructions is itself period evidence. No fat temperature is specified, and a cook was expected to judge it by the way a scrap of dough behaved when dropped in.