Batter IV
1 cup flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 3 tablespoons powdered sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup milk 1 egg Mix and sift dry ingredients, add milk gradually, and egg well beaten. Batter V 1 cup flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup milk or water Yolks 2 eggs Whites 2 eggs 1 tablespoon melted butter or olive oil Mix salt and flour, add milk gradually, yolks of eggs beaten until thick, butter, and whites of eggs beaten until stiff.
Apple Fritters I 2 medium-sized sour apples Powdered sugar Batter III Pare, core, and cut apples in eighths, then cut eighths in slices, and stir into batter. Drop by spoonfuls and fry in deep fat. Drain on brown paper, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve hot on a folded napkin.
Three linked entries: two all-purpose frying batters and a fritter that uses them. The batters are thin coating batters meant for deep fat, not pancake batters.
- Consistency is the hingeBoth batters should coat the back of a spoon and drip slowly, not pour freely. If the flour is a modern high-protein bread flour, add milk a spoonful at a time until it does; a batter that is too thick fries heavy and stays raw at the center.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "fry in deep fat" and names no fat or temperature; period frying fat was commonly lard, and modern practice for fritters is around 365-375F. Too cool and the batter absorbs fat; too hot and the sugar in the sweetened batter browns before the apple softens.
- Batter IV is the sweet oneBatter IV is the sweetened one -- Three tablespoons of powdered sugar plus baking powder make it puff and brown quickly, which suits fruit; Batter V, leavened only by beaten whites, is plainer. The page itself assigns no use to either, and the fritter below in fact calls for Batter III.
- Powdered sugarIn American cookbooks of this period "powdered sugar" often meant a fine granulated sugar rather than today's confectioners'/icing sugar, which was usually listed separately. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match in the batter; confectioners' will serve for the dusting at the end.
- Folding the whitesIn Batter V, fold the stiff whites in last with a light hand and fry immediately. The lift is mechanical and it collapses within a few minutes of standing.
- Apples"Sour apples" means a tart cooking variety; Granny Smith, Bramley or Northern Spy will do. Cut in eighths and then into slices as directed, they cook through in the few minutes the batter needs to color.
- DrainingBrown paper was the grocer's bag of the day. A wire rack over a sheet pan drains better and keeps the underside from steaming soft; paper towels are the direct substitute.
History: Numbered batters like these belong to the American cooking-school tradition of the turn of the twentieth century, when instructors set down base preparations that could be cross-referenced from other recipes rather than repeated under each one. Apple fritters themselves are far older than the system that files them: fruit dipped in batter and fried in deep fat appears in English cookery books from the medieval period onward, and tart cooking apples hold their shape in the fat. Serving fried things on a folded napkin was standard advice in cookbooks of the period.