Apple Fritters
INGREDIENTS for sufficient for 6 persons.-2 tablespoonfuls of flour, oz. of butter, saltspoonful of salt, 2 eggs, milk, 4 medium-sized apples, hot lard or clarified beef dripping, sugar, lemon juice.
AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Divide the whites from the yolks of the eggs, and beat them separately. Put the flour into a basin, stir in the butter, which should be melted to a cream; add the salt, and moisten with sufficient warm milk to make it of a proper consistency, that is to say, a batter that will drop from the APPLE FRITTERS. spoon. Stir this well, rub down any lumps that may be seen, add the yolks and then the whites of the eggs, which have been previously well whisked; beat up the batter for a few minutes, and it is ready for use. Peel and cut the apples into rather thick whole slices, without dividing them, and stamp out the core of each slice with a cutter; squeeze some lemon juice over a little sifted sugar, dip the slices in this, then throw them into the batter; have ready a pan of boiling lard or clarified dripping; take out the pieces of apple one by one, put them into the hot lard, and fry a nice brown, turning them when required.
When done, lay them on a piece of blotting-paper before the fire, to absorb the APPLE JAM. greasy moisture; then pile the fritters one above the other; strew over them some pounded sugar, and serve very hot. The batter is better for being mixed some hours before the fritters are made.
TIME. From 7 to 10 minutes to fry the fritters; 5 minutes to drain them.
SEASONABLE from August to March.
A plain drop batter, apple rings macerated in sugar and lemon, and a pan of hot fat. The technique is sound; only the units and the draining need translating.
- The batter quantities are incompleteAs printed, the butter, salt and milk have lost their fractions, and the flour figure may be garbled too, since two tablespoonfuls will not coat four apples. Any fuller quantity you work from (a few ounces of flour, about 1 oz melted butter, a pinch of salt, 2 eggs separated, warm milk added gradually until it drops thickly from the spoon) is a modern reconstruction, not what this page says.
- SaltspoonfulA Victorian saltspoon holds about 1/4 teaspoon. It is a seasoning quantity, not a structural one.
- Mix it earlyThe note at the end is the hinge: the batter is better made some hours ahead. Resting hydrates the flour and slackens the gluten, giving a lighter crust. Fold the whisked whites in only at the last moment, not before the rest.
- Fat temperature"Boiling lard" means fat at about 350-375F. Below that the fritters absorb grease; above it the outside colours before the apple softens. Lard or clarified beef dripping both work; a neutral oil with a high smoke point is the modern substitute.
- Cutting the applesThick whole slices means rings cut across the fruit, about 1/3 inch, with the core stamped out. A firm apple such as Granny Smith holds its shape; a Bramley or a soft dessert apple tends to break down in the fat.
- Blotting-paperUse kitchen paper or a rack set over a tray. Modern blotting paper and printer paper are not intended for food contact, and the fire the original assumes is simply a warm spot near the heat.
- Frying timeSeven to ten minutes probably assumes a large pan of fritters going in at once. In a modern pan holding only three or four rings at a time, two to three minutes a side is usually enough. Fry in batches so the fat stays hot.
- Yield and servingFour apples give roughly sixteen to twenty rings, enough for six as a light pudding. Dust with caster sugar and serve immediately; they lose their crispness within minutes.
- Season and cost"August to March" reflects the keeping life of stored apples before cold storage. The 1s. average cost is a Victorian housekeeping figure and has no modern equivalent.
Fritters of this kind are among the oldest sweet dishes in English cookery, appearing in medieval manuscripts as fruit or herbs dipped in a leavened batter and fried in lard on days when richer cooking was allowed. By Mrs Beeton's time the dish had broadly taken the form given here: a batter lightened with whisked egg white rather than yeast, apple rings rather than chopped fruit, and a finish of pounded sugar. Its place in a Victorian household book is practical. Apples were among the fruits an English kitchen could count on from the autumn picking through to early spring, and a fritter turned windfalls and slightly shrivelled store-room apples into a hot pudding at little cost. The instruction to drain on paper before the fire is a reminder that frying fat was expensive and reused, and that a greasy fritter was read as a sign of a careless cook.