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Mrs. Bedford's Chocolate Crullers
Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter and one-half of a cupful of sugar; gradually add the beaten yolks of three eggs and one and one-half cupfuls more of sugar, one cupful of sour milk, one teaspoonful of vanilla, two ounces of chocolate grated and melted over hot water, one-third of a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in one-half of a teaspoonful of boiling water, the whites of the eggs whipped to a stiff froth, and sufficient sifted flour to make a soft dough. Roll out, cut into oblongs; divide each into three strips, leaving the dough united at one end. Braid loosely, pinch the ends together and cook until golden-brown in smoking-hot fat.--Mrs. Cornelia C. Bedford.
A braided, deep-fried cruller raised with sour milk and soda rather than yeast. Two things decide the result: how much flour you add to a dough that is never measured, and how hot the fat is when the braids go in.
- Two cups of sugar, and that is not a misprintThe sugar arrives in two instalments, half a cup creamed with the butter and a cup and a half more with the yolks. It reads like an error, but the 1912 and 1924 printings of this recipe agree, and what it gives you is a sweet, cake-like cruller rather than a plain doughnut. Two tablespoonfuls of butter is all the fat the dough itself carries; the rest arrives in the frying.
- Sour milk and soda are one ingredient, not twoThe acid in the soured milk is what releases the gas from the soda, and neither does anything useful alone. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern substitute. Failing that, stir a tablespoonful of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and leave it ten minutes to clabber.
- "One-half of a teaspoonful of boiling water"Half a teaspoonful is barely a wetting. Its job is to slake the soda into a paste so it disperses through the dough instead of streaking it. Use a full teaspoonful if that is easier to measure; the extra water makes no difference at this scale.
- "Sufficient sifted flour" is the one thing you must judgeExpect somewhere around three to three and a half cups. Stop while the dough is still soft and a little tacky. More flour makes a tough, bready cruller, and an hour in the refrigerator does far more for rollability than extra flour does.
- "Smoking-hot fat" is hotter than you wantA period cue written for a kitchen with no thermometer, and past the smoke point of anything you would fry in today. Work at 360 to 375F. Below that the braids drink fat and go heavy; above it they colour before the centre sets.
- Cutting the braidRoll about a third of an inch thick and cut oblongs of roughly three inches by four, then slit each lengthwise into three strips, stopping short of one end so they stay joined. Braid loosely. The dough swells in the fat, and a tight braid closes into a lump.
- The whites go in lastYolks with the sugar, whipped whites near the end. That is what keeps a dough carrying this much sugar from frying dense. Fold them through rather than beating them in.
- DrainingDrain on a rack, not on paper, which traps steam and softens the underside. These need no finish, though the period one is a dusting of powdered sugar once they have stopped steaming.
Three recipes in this run of the booklet are signed Mrs. Cornelia C. Bedford, and the signature is doing work. Cornelia Campbell Bedford was superintendent of the New York Cooking School, and her name carried enough weight with American housekeepers that it turns up in period advertising for other grocery brands as well, quoted by name and title in notices for Cleveland's Baking Powder. A Walter Baker booklet gathering contributions from Bedford, Janet McKenzie Hill and Emma P. Ewing is doing precisely what that baking-powder advertisement did: renting the cooking schools' authority to sell a branded ingredient. The cruller is much older than any of them. The word is Dutch, from a verb meaning to curl, and the twisted or braided fried cake reached American kitchens through New York, which is where Bedford taught.