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Vegetable Fritters
Celery, oyster-plant or salsify, parsnip, or egg-plant should be cut into small pieces and stewed until tender, then seasoned with salt and pepper, then stirred into the batter and fried the same as other fritters, always remembering to drain them from any superfluous fat before sending them to the table.
A method rather than a full recipe: it assumes the fritter batter given earlier in the section and shows how to carry it across four vegetables. The points below cover the parts that a modern cook has to supply.
- The batterNo proportions are given because the book expects you to use the plain fritter batter from the surrounding pages. A workable standard is 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 egg and about 2/3 cup milk, beaten smooth and thick enough to coat the vegetable heavily.
- Oyster-plant and salsifyThey are two names for the same root, which is why the recipe offers them as alternatives. Peeled salsify browns within minutes; hold the cut pieces in water with a squeeze of lemon until they go into the pan.
- Cut small, and drain hardThe recipe says only 'small pieces'; half-inch dice works well. After stewing, drain the pieces thoroughly and let them steam dry for a minute or two, or the surface water will thin the batter and it will slide off in the fat.
- Egg-plantModern eggplant is generally bred less bitter than older varieties, so salting to draw out bitterness is optional; it may still help firm the flesh and reduce how much fat the fritter absorbs. Stew the cubes only until barely tender or they will collapse into the batter.
- Frying temperatureThe original assumes a deep kettle of fat judged by eye. Hold 365-375F. Below that the fritters soak; much above it and the outside colors before the batter sets.
- Cool the vegetables firstStir the seasoned pieces into the batter only when they are no more than warm. Hot vegetables will start cooking the egg and slacken the batter.
- DrainingThe instruction to drain from superfluous fat is the hinge. Lift onto a rack set over a tray rather than onto paper, which traps steam and softens the crust.
- YieldA batch of batter with about 2 cups of prepared vegetable makes roughly 18 to 20 fritters, enough for four as a side dish.
Fritters of this kind belong to a long tradition of stretching a small quantity of vegetable with flour, egg and fat, and by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks routinely gave one master batter followed by a list of things to stir into it, which is exactly the shape of this entry. The vegetables named mark the period: salsify, sold as oyster-plant for the faint shellfish flavor attributed to it, was a common winter root in American kitchen gardens and has since largely dropped out of the market, while parsnip and celery were both cheap cold-weather staples. Eggplant was probably the least familiar of the four, and was still often written as egg-plant in two words, though this recipe treats it no differently from the others. The insistence on draining reflects the reality of frying in a deep kettle of lard or drippings.