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Yeast Batter for Kromeskis
Ingredients.
Castor Sugar. Quarter of a pound of Flour.
Quarter of an ounce of Yeast.
One gill of Milk.
This is a component formula rather than a finished dish: three ingredients, no method, on the assumption that the cook already knows how a frying batter behaves. Here is what the entry leaves unsaid.
- The gillThis is a British book, so a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint — 5 fl oz, about 150 ml. Do not use the American half-cup (4 fl oz); the batter will be too stiff to coat evenly.
- Weights in metricA quarter pound of flour is 115 g, roughly one cup of plain flour scooped and levelled. A quarter ounce of yeast is 7 g, and a weight like this almost certainly indicates fresh compressed yeast; that equates to about 2 to 3 g of instant dried yeast.
- The missing methodWarm the milk to blood heat, cream the yeast into a little of it, then beat it into the flour to a smooth batter the thickness of pouring cream. Cover and leave in a warm place 45 to 60 minutes until risen and bubbled, then beat down lightly just before using.
- SaltNone is listed, and a batter this plain needs about half a teaspoon. Add it to the flour, not to the yeast liquid, so it does not check the ferment.
- Consistency is the hingeThe batter must cling to the kromeski without sliding off and without sitting on it in a jacket. If it runs off the spoon in a ribbon that vanishes instantly it is too thin; slacken a stiff batter with milk a teaspoon at a time.
- FryingDeep fat at 350-375F (175-190C). Watch it closely and drain on paper the moment it is a good colour.
- YieldA small quantity, enough to coat a modest number of kromeskis. It is best used within an hour or two of rising; a batter left all day goes sour and slack.
Kromeskis — cromesquis in French kitchens, and generally traced to the Polish and Russian kr dmeski — are essentially croquettes given a second identity: a firm, chilled salpicon of minced chicken, game, sweetbread or fish, wrapped traditionally in a thin sheet of bacon or calf's udder, then dipped in batter and deep fried rather than crumbed. That wrapping is what distinguishes them from the plain croquette, and the batter is what distinguishes them again from a crumbed one. A yeast batter was one of the coatings used for them in the nineteenth-century repertoire; fermentation makes the coating puff and lighten in the fat, giving a crisper, lighter shell than a dense crust. Its appearance here as a bare list of three ingredients tells you something about the readership of a book called High Class Cookery Recipes: these were notes for cooks who needed the proportions, not the lesson.