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Dropped Doughnuts
1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup sugar Grated rind of 1 lemon 1 1/2 cups Gold Medal flour 1 egg, beaten separately 1/3 teaspoon salt 1/3 teaspoon nutmeg 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder Hold teaspoonful of batter close to fat and the doughnuts will come up in round balls.
A batter doughnut rather than a rolled-and-cut one: no rolling pin, no cutter, just spoonfuls dropped into hot fat. The original gives no fat temperature and no method beyond the final line, so the gaps need filling.
- "Egg, beaten separately""Egg, beaten separately" most likely means the yolk and white are beaten apart from each other rather than that the egg is beaten in a separate bowl, though the wording is ambiguous. On that reading, beat the yolk into the milk and sugar and fold the stiffly beaten white in last — it is the only lift the batter gets besides the baking powder.
- Fat temperatureAim for 365–375F. Below that the batter drinks fat and goes heavy; above it the outside colours before the centre sets. Period cook books commonly gave a bread-cube test, the cube browning in roughly a minute.
- The hinge: hold the spoon lowThe last line is the whole technique. Bringing the spoon close to the surface lets the batter enter as one mass and round itself; dropped from height it strings out and fries into ragged tails.
- Batter consistencyOne and a half cups of flour to half a cup of milk gives a thick drop batter that just clings to the spoon. If it slumps off freely, add flour a tablespoon at a time — a loose batter will not hold a ball.
- Fat to useThe book's era meant lard or, from 1911 onward, a hydrogenated shortening. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works, in enough depth that the balls can turn and float free.
- Baking powderA heaping teaspoon is roughly a level teaspoon and a half. Mix and fry promptly; a single-acting period powder starts working as soon as the liquid goes in.
- Yield and finishingFinishing -- Drain on paper and roll in granulated or cinnamon sugar while still warm; they are best eaten the day they are fried.
- The odd fractionsA third of a teaspoon of salt and of nutmeg may reflect measuring by eye rather than with graduated spoons. A generous third of a teaspoon of each is the practical equivalent.
Gold Medal Flour's cook books were promotional literature from the Washburn-Crosby milling company of Minneapolis, given away or sold cheaply to put the brand name into the recipe line itself — note that the flour is named in the ingredients where a plain cook book would simply say "flour." Dropped doughnuts are often said to belong to the older, humbler half of the doughnut family: on the traditional account, before the rolled and cut ring became standard, a spoonful of sweetened batter dropped into fat was the quicker household version, and related forms appear under names like olykoek, fritter and drop cake. The grated lemon rind with nutmeg is generally traced to nineteenth-century practice, nutmeg having reputedly been the default doughnut spice in American kitchens long before cinnamon took over.