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Banana Fritters II
3 bananas 1 cup bread flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 tablespoon powdered sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup milk 1 egg 1 tablespoon lemon juice Mix and sift dry ingredients. Beat egg until light, add milk, and combine mixtures; then add lemon juice and banana fruit forced through a sieve. Drop by spoonfuls, fry in deep fat, and drain. Serve with Lemon Sauce.
A thick drop batter rather than a dipped one — the bananas are pureed into the mixture, so the fritters come out uniformly soft rather than sliced. A few points worth settling before you start.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. Cookbooks of the period judged deep fat by dropping in a cube of bread and timing how long it took to brown — a matter of under a minute, which in modern terms lands somewhere around 360-390F. Below that the batter absorbs grease; much above it and the outside colors before the center sets. The fat itself would have been lard, a rendered fat, or one of the vegetable compounds then sold.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this era "powdered sugar" was a grade of sugar ground finer than granulated but coarser than today's cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. Either modern sugar works here; the quantity is small and it is for flavor, not structure.
- Bread flourBread flour was the ordinary strong household flour of the day. Modern all-purpose gives a more tender fritter; bread flour will give a chewier one, which some prefer for frying.
- Sieving the fruitThree ripe bananas will give you somewhere between one and one and a half cups of puree, depending on their size. A food mill is quicker; a fork is quicker still but leaves the mixture coarser than a sieve does. Very ripe fruit is easier to push through and sweeter.
- Batter consistencyWith only a quarter cup of milk, the banana puree supplies most of the liquid. If your bananas are underripe and dry the batter will be stiff enough to hold its shape awkwardly; loosen with a spoonful more milk so it drops cleanly.
- The lemon juiceAdded at the end of the mixing, along with the sieved fruit. The recipe does not say why; acid does cut the sweetness, and it may also react with the baking powder, which is reason enough to fry the batter soon after mixing rather than letting it stand.
- Size and timingTablespoon-sized drops need about three minutes, turning once, and should be deep gold throughout. Larger spoonfuls will still be raw at the center when the outside is done. Drain on paper, not on a cloth.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; expect a dozen or more small fritters. Lemon Sauce is the book's own accompaniment, and books of this period generally offer more than one version under that name — a cornstarch-thickened sugar syrup with lemon juice, butter and rind, or a creamed butter-and-sugar hard sauce.