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Cherry Fritters
2 cups scalded milk 1/4 cup corn-starch 1/4 cup flour 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup cold milk Yolks 3 eggs 1/2 cup Maraschino cherries, cut in halves Mix corn-starch, flour, sugar, and salt. Dilute with cold milk and add beaten yolks; then add gradually to scalded milk and cook fifteen minutes in double boiler. Add cherries, pour into a buttered shallow tin, and cool. Turn on a board, cut in squares, dip in flour, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat, and drain. Serve with Maraschino Sauce.
This is a fried custard rather than a batter fritter: a stiff cornstarch pastry cream is set firm, cut into squares, breaded and deep-fried. The hinge is the chilling — a soft slab cannot be cut or breaded, and it will burst in the fat.
- Cool means cold"pour into a buttered shallow tin, and cool" means chilling until properly firm; several hours in a cold place or refrigerator, or overnight, will do it. The slab should be firm enough to lift cleanly and cut with a knife wiped between strokes.
- Pan sizeNo tin is specified. An 8-inch square pan gives a slab about three-quarters of an inch thick, which fries through without the interior staying cold; that yields roughly sixteen squares, or four to six servings.
- The fifteen minutes matterUnlike most custards, this one wants the full time in the double boiler. Cornstarch and flour need sustained heat to cook out the raw starch taste and to reach full thickening power, and the water bath keeps the yolks from curdling.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "deep fat" and gives no number; modern practice for this kind of fritter is around 375F. Cooler fat lets the squares absorb grease and soften before the crust sets; hotter and the crumbs darken before the center warms. Fry a few at a time and drain on a rack rather than piled on paper.
- Flour, egg, and crumbsThe standard period breading sequence: flour, then beaten whole egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then fine dry breadcrumbs. Two coats of egg and crumbs on the cut faces are worth the trouble, since those edges are where custard escapes.
- Maraschino cherriesAround the turn of the century these were often cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, firmer than the modern article, though sugar-syrup imitations were already on the American market. Modern bright-red cocktail cherries are sugar-syrup preserved and much wetter; drain and blot them well, or use the darker Italian-style cherries in syrup.
- Leftover whitesThree whites are unused. They keep several days refrigerated and go into a meringue or the egg wash for the breading.
- Maraschino SauceThe book intends a separate sauce recipe. In its absence, a thin syrup of the cherry liquid with a little maraschino stirred in serves the same purpose; the fritters are bland on their own and need it.
Fried custard squares are an old European trick that appears across cookbooks under several names — crema fritta in northern Italy, beignets de crème in French practice. The maraschino element points to the liqueur made around Zara on the Dalmatian coast from marasca cherries; by the turn of the century the cherries steeped in it had become a fashionable garnish in American hotels and confectioners, and their bright novelty is much of the point of the dish.