Home › Doughnuts and Crullers › Crullers Without Eggs
Crullers Without Eggs
1 pint sugar ⅔ pint cold water 2 tablespoons lard 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon salt Flavor with lemon or vanilla Five Roses flour.
This is a recipe in the older shorthand style: a list of proportions handed to a cook who already knew what crullers were. Everything not stated has to be supplied from practice.
- The flour is the whole methodNo quantity is given because the cook was expected to add flour until she had a dough stiff enough to roll — roughly 5 to 6 cups for this amount of liquid. Work in the least flour that gives a dough you can handle; every extra cup makes the crullers harder and drier.
- Volume measures for sugar and waterA pint here is a measuring pint, not a pound. On a US pint that is 2 cups of granulated sugar and 1⅓ cups of water; in a Canadian book the imperial pint (20 fl oz) may be intended, which would be nearer 2½ cups sugar and 1⅔ cups water. Either way the proportion of sugar to water is three to two.
- Cream of tartar plus sodaTwo parts cream of tartar to one part soda is the classic homemade baking powder, and it starts working the moment the wet dough is mixed. Have the fat already at temperature before you mix, and get the cut pieces into it promptly.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat at 365-375F. This is a very sweet dough — 2 cups of sugar — and sugar colours fast, so fat much above that will give you dark crullers with raw centres.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll about ⅓ inch thick, cut into strips a few inches long, and twist or slash them; the twisted or slashed strip is the shape most often associated with the cruller, as against the ring doughnut. They will take roughly 1½ to 2 minutes a side.
- The lardTwo tablespoons of lard is the shortening in the dough, not the frying fat. Butter or vegetable shortening works; you will need a quart or more of fresh fat or oil for the frying itself.
- No eggs, so no richness to hide behindEggless dough is less tender and stales quickly. These are best eaten the day they are made, and they are noticeably better rolled thin than thick.
- YieldYield depends on how much flour goes in and how thin you roll, but expect several dozen twists from the full quantity. The proportions halve cleanly.
Cruller comes from the Dutch krulle, a curl or twist, and the shape — a strip of dough twisted or slashed before frying — is what distinguishes it from the ring doughnut. Eggless versions like this one belong to a long tradition of household economy baking, where cream of tartar and soda stood in for both eggs and commercial baking powder, and where a page of bare proportions was enough instruction for anyone who had watched it done. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed to buyers of its Five Roses flour; recipes calling for a strong Canadian hard-wheat flour by brand name were, of course, part of the point, and a dough carrying this little fat and no egg depends heavily on the flour's own strength to hold together.