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Sour Cream Crullers
Beat 2 eggs without separating, add 1 cupful of sugar, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla and ¼ of a teaspoonful of mace or nutmeg. Sift ½ of a teaspoonful of soda into 1 cupful of thick sour cream and stir until the cream feels light. Add this quickly to the other mixture, then sift in sufficient flour to make a very soft dough. Turn at once upon a floured board, roll out, cut in rings and fry quickly in deep, smoking hot fat.
A quick, soda-raised doughnut that depends on soured cream for both lift and tenderness. The dough is deliberately slack, so speed and a light hand matter more than precision.
- The hinge: keep the dough softAdd only enough flour to make a dough you can just barely roll — roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups, added a little at a time. Every extra spoonful past that point turns crullers from tender to bready, and the soda begins losing power the moment it meets the acid cream.
- Sour cream, then and nowThe original means naturally soured raw cream, thick and distinctly acidic. Modern cultured sour cream (full fat, not light) is the right substitute; it has the acidity the soda needs. Do not use fresh cream soured with vinegar here, as the texture will be too thin.
- "Stir until the cream feels light"The soda reacts immediately with the acid and the cream visibly puffs and lightens. That is the signal to combine and proceed — the dough should go into the fat within a few minutes, not rest.
- Frying temperature"Smoking hot" is a poor guide with modern refined oils, which smoke well above frying range. Use 370-375F. Below that the rings absorb fat; much above and the outside colours before the centre sets.
- Fat choiceLard was the usual frying fat of the period, with rendered beef fat also in use. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works, and at least 3 inches of depth so the crullers can float and turn.
- TimingAbout 1 to 1 1/2 minutes a side, turning once when the underside is deep gold. Break one open before frying the rest to confirm the middle is cooked through.
- ShapingRoll to about 1/3 inch. Cut with a doughnut cutter or two rounds of different sizes; this recipe specifies rings.
- YieldRoughly 18 to 24 rings depending on cutter size, plus holes. They are best within a few hours; sugar them warm if desired.
Crullers reached American kitchens through Dutch settlement — the name traces to the Dutch krullen, to curl — and by the late nineteenth century the word covered almost any fried sweet dough cut in rings, twists or knots. This version belongs to the sour-cream school of baking that was standard in households with a milk supply of their own: cream left to sour was an asset, not a spoiled ingredient, and paired with saleratus or soda it gave lift without eggs beyond a couple and without yeast or waiting. A pantry of eggs, sugar, flour, soda and yesterday's cream produced two dozen sweets in under half an hour, which is why fried cakes of this kind appear in nearly every economical cookbook of the period.