Fritters
Fritter Batter, No. 1 1 egg 1 cup milk 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt Mix the dry ingredients, add the milk gradually and eggs well beaten. When used for a sweet dish add a teaspoon of sugar.
Fritter Batter, No. 2 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 cup milk 2 eggs 1 tablespoon salad oil Mix the dry ingredients, add the milk slowly, then the olive oil and lastly the egg beaten till stiff.
Two all-purpose coating batters from the era when a fritter meant almost anything dipped and fried — apple rings, corn, oysters, leftover meat. Neither recipe tells you the frying temperature, which is the thing that decides whether they succeed.
- Fat temperatureFry at 365–375F. Below that the batter drinks oil and goes heavy; above about 385F the outside colors before the interior sets. A thermometer is worth more here than any adjustment to the batter itself.
- Which batter for whatNo. 1 is unleavened and thinner — a clinging coating for fruit slices, oysters or fish. No. 2, with baking powder and stiffly beaten egg, puffs and is better for corn fritters and dropped fritters.
- An inconsistency in No. 1The ingredient list gives one egg, the method says "eggs." One egg gives a workable coating batter; a second makes it richer and slightly more tender. Take the list as the intent.
- "Beaten till stiff"Whole eggs will not beat stiff. In No. 2 this most likely means the whites beaten to soft-firm peaks and folded in at the end, with the yolks going in earlier — though the recipe does not actually say to separate them. Fold, do not stir, or the lift is lost.
- Salad oil and olive oilThe list says salad oil, the method says olive oil — at the time the terms overlapped, and "salad oil" often meant olive. Any neutral oil works and will taste less assertive.
- ConsistencyBoth should coat a spoon and fall in a ribbon, roughly heavy-cream thick. Flour absorbency varies; hold back a spoonful or two of milk and adjust rather than following the cup measure blindly.
- RestingLet No. 1 sit 20–30 minutes so the flour hydrates and the gluten relaxes — it fries crisper. No. 2 should be used within a few minutes of folding in the whites, before the leavening and the foam collapse.
Fritter batters like these were standard equipment in an American kitchen, not a recipe for a particular dish — a household might well keep one in mind the way it kept a plain pastry or a white sauce, and attach it to whatever was on hand. The word comes through Old French friture, from Latin frigere, to fry, and the form is very old across Europe; what these two versions show is chemical leavening, commercially available from the mid-nineteenth century, taking its place alongside the older method. That No. 1 relies on egg alone while No. 2 adds baking powder shows the older and newer methods sitting side by side on one page. The Gold Medal book, published by Washburn-Crosby to sell flour, favored this sort of flexible base formula: one batter, many uses, and a cup of the company's flour in each.