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Batter
4 ounces of flour 1/4 pint tepid water 1 tablespoon of salad oil Mix the oil and flour together, and make into a smooth batter with the water.
A plain coating batter for frying vegetables, cheese or fruit, of the eggless type that relies on oil for tenderness. A few conversions and one point about handling are all it needs.
- 4 ounces of flourThis is a weight, not a volume: about 115 g, or roughly a scant cup of all-purpose flour measured by spoon-and-level. Weighing it is far more reliable here, since the whole recipe is a fixed flour-to-liquid ratio.
- 1/4 pint of waterAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz (about 140 ml); a US quarter-pint is 4 fl oz (120 ml). Which is meant is not certain from the page. Start with 120 ml and add the rest by degrees until the batter coats a spoon and falls from it in a thick ribbon.
- Salad oilIn this period the term means a light, mild oil for dressing salads, most often olive but sometimes cottonseed or a refined nut oil. Any neutral oil works; the point is a spoonful of fat to keep the crust tender rather than leathery.
- Tepid water, and whyWarm water lets the oil disperse and the flour hydrate quickly. Mix oil into flour first, as directed, then add water gradually to a paste before thinning; adding all the liquid at once is what produces lumps.
- Rest itHalf an hour at room temperature lets the gluten relax and the starch swell, giving a smoother batter that clings better and fries lighter. Whisk briefly before use if it has thickened.
- Frying temperatureAn eggless batter needs a hot fat to set fast: 350-375F (175-190C). Cooler than that and the batter drinks oil and goes greasy.
- Optional liftSome period cookery books direct a stiffly whipped egg white to be folded into a batter like this just before frying, for a puffier coating. Left as written it fries thin and crisp, which suits vegetables and cheese.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; as a rough guide this quantity should coat about a pound of prepared vegetables, or a dozen small fritters.
This is the older European kitchen batter, the pâte à frire whose earliest forms were nothing more than flour thinned with water, wine or beer, with fat worked in for tenderness. Eggless versions recommended themselves on economy. The phrase "salad oil" helps date the page: before bottled vegetable oils were a supermarket commodity, oil in an English-speaking kitchen was chiefly a salad dressing ingredient, sold in small quantities, and named for that use rather than for cooking.