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Egg-Plant Puffs or Fritters
Pare, cut in pieces, soak in cold water, and boil until tender. Drain, press through a colander. Make the regulation fritter batter, season the egg-plant and beat it into the batter. Drop in spoonfuls into boiling fat; cook golden brown. Drain, and serve with parsley garniture.
A short, confident note of the kind written for cooks who already knew what "the regulation fritter batter" meant. The whole dish turns on how dry you get the eggplant pulp before it meets the batter.
- The hinge: drain hardBoiled eggplant holds an enormous amount of water, and pulp pressed through a colander while still wet will thin the batter until the puffs collapse in the fat. Press the pulp firmly, then let it sit in the sieve or in a clean towel until it stops weeping before you measure anything else.
- "Regulation fritter batter"The recipe assumes a batter the reader already knew and gives none. A plausible reconstruction is about 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 egg and about 1/2 cup milk, beaten smooth. Aim for a batter that mounds on the spoon; the eggplant will loosen it as you beat it in.
- No quantities are givenThe original specifies neither the size of the eggplant nor the amount of batter. One medium eggplant (about 1 lb) yields roughly a cup of pressed pulp, which the batter above will carry comfortably.
- Salting versus soakingThe cold-water soak is unexplained here; it was likely intended to draw out bitterness, though soaking pared eggplant also keeps the cut flesh from darkening. Modern varieties are generally less bitter, so the soak can be treated as optional; a light salting for 30 minutes before boiling does more to firm the flesh and limit water uptake.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "boiling fat," with no temperature. For fritters of this kind, deep fat around 365-375F works: below that the batter drinks oil and goes heavy; above it the outside colors before the interior sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Seasoning"Season the egg-plant" is left entirely to the cook. Salt, black pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or grated onion are period-appropriate; grated Parmesan or chopped parsley worked into the pulp also suits it.
- Yield and servingExpect 12 to 16 fritters, enough for four as a side dish. They soften quickly, so drain on paper and serve at once, with the fried or fresh parsley garnish the recipe calls for.
Eggplant reached American tables slowly. It was grown in kitchen gardens well before it was widely eaten, and nineteenth-century writers still felt obliged to explain what it was and to advise soaking it against bitterness. In American cookery it settled into a small repertoire of standard treatments: fried in slices, stuffed and baked, or boiled to a pulp and worked into fritters. The instruction to "make the regulation fritter batter" is characteristic of the genre: such compilations assumed a cook who had already learned a handful of base preparations, so the recipe records only what is peculiar to this dish and leaves the rest to memory.