Home › The Principles of Cookery › Yorkshire Fritters
Yorkshire Fritters
Mix two ounces of powdered sugar, a pinch of salt, and a quarter of a nutmeg, grated, with half a pound of flour. Add a table-spoonful of fresh yeast, or half an ounce of German yeast, and half a pint of fresh milk, and beat the whole to a thick batter. Stir into it two ounces of currants picked and dried, throw a cloth over the bowl, and put it before the fire or in a warm place to rise. At the end of half an hour, or when well risen, stir in three well-beaten eggs. Make a little butter or dripping hot in a frying-pan, drop the batter into it a spoonful at a time, and keep the fritters apart. When they are brown upon one side, turn them upon the other; drain them, serve on a napkin, and sift powdered white sugar thickly over them. Time to fry the fritters, three or four minutes. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A yeast-raised drop fritter rather than a batter poured over fruit, and the yeast is where most of the translation work lies.
- The hinge: raise first, eggs lastThe batter ferments for half an hour before the beaten eggs go in, so the eggs give a final lift in the pan rather than being worked into the dough at the start. Do not fold the eggs in early and let the whole thing prove together.
- Yeast conversions"German yeast" is compressed fresh baker's yeast; half an ounce is about 14 g, or roughly 5 g (1½ teaspoons) of instant dried yeast. The alternative "tablespoonful of fresh yeast" is most likely liquid barm from brewing, for which there is no close modern substitute — use the compressed measure.
- Weights and measuresHalf a pound of flour is 225 g, about 1¾ cups. Two ounces of sugar is 55 g, two ounces of currants likewise. The half pint is imperial: 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups.
- A quarter of a nutmegGrated, that comes to roughly half a teaspoon — assertive but not overwhelming against the currants. Grate it fresh; pre-ground nutmeg at that quantity tastes dusty.
- Milk temperatureThe recipe says only "fresh milk," but warming it to blood heat (about 98–100F) will help the batter rise in the half hour allowed; straight from the refrigerator it is likely to take considerably longer.
- Frying fat and heatButter or beef dripping in a shallow pan, hot but not smoking — around 350-360F. Butter alone will brown and speck at that heat; dripping or a butter-and-neutral-oil mix holds better through several batches.
- Keeping them apartThe instruction is practical: these puff as they hit the fat and will fuse into a sheet if crowded. Three or four spoonfuls at a time in a 10-inch pan is plenty.
- Serving"Serve on a napkin" means a folded cloth on the dish to absorb fat — a rack over paper does the same job. Sugar them while still hot so it clings. Serves three or four as written.
The Yorkshire label points to the north-country habit of using bread dough or a yeasted batter for sweet things. Fritters of this kind sit close to the same family as Yorkshire's yeasted spice buns and the currant-studded doughs sold at fairs; the currants and nutmeg were the standard sweet-spice pairing of the Victorian store cupboard, cheap enough to appear in a recipe costed at sevenpence. The "probable cost" line is characteristic of the book, which was written for households running to a budget and wanted the price of a dish stated as plainly as its cooking time. The reference to German yeast is a useful period marker: compressed yeast imported from Continental distilleries and breweries became widely available to British cooks in the later nineteenth century, and recipe books of the time routinely give it as an alternative to the older brewer's barm.