Banana Fritters
3 bananas 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup milk 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 egg Mash the bananas fine, mix the flour and seasonings, combine with the bananas, alternating with milk; add lemon juice and lastly the egg beaten light. Drop by spoonfuls into deep fat and fry. Drain on paper and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
A straightforward drop-batter fritter that needs almost no translation; the only real variables are the ripeness of the fruit and the temperature of the fat.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "deep fat." Work at 365-375F. Below that the fritters absorb grease and stay pale inside; much above it and the outside browns before the batter sets around the fruit.
- Depth of fatTwo to three inches in a heavy pot is enough for the fritters to float and turn themselves. Fry no more than five or six at a time so the temperature does not crash.
- Ripe bananasUse fruit that is well speckled. Firm, faintly green bananas mash into lumps and taste starchy; the sugar in the recipe assumes the fruit is bringing sweetness of its own.
- Add the egg last, and gentlyAdd the egg last -- The recipe calls for the egg to be beaten light and added last. That beaten egg is the only lift the batter gets besides the baking powder, so it is worth handling lightly rather than beating it in hard.
- Batter consistencyYou want a thick drop batter that holds its shape on the spoon. Bananas vary in moisture, so hold back some of the milk and add it only if the mixture is too stiff to drop cleanly.
- Baking powderModern baking powder is double-acting, which works in your favor here: some of the lift is held back until the fritter hits the hot fat. Fry the batter promptly rather than letting it stand half an hour.
- Testing for donenessDeep golden brown on both sides, about three to four minutes total. Break the first one open before committing to the batch, since a raw streak in the middle is the usual failure.
- Yield and servingMakes roughly a dozen to fifteen fritters, enough for four. Drain on paper, dust with confectioners' sugar while still hot, and serve immediately; they slump within ten minutes.
Fritters like these sat at the point where a cheap staple met a novelty. By the 1910s and 1920s, when Washburn-Crosby was distributing Gold Medal cookbooks to promote its flour, bananas had gone from a luxury to one of the least expensive fruits in an American grocery, carried north by refrigerated steamers and rail cars in enormous volume, and cookbooks scrambled to find uses for them beyond eating out of hand. The powdered sugar finish was a common treatment for anything fried in deep fat, from crullers to apple fritters, and marks this as a dessert or supper sweet rather than a side dish.