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Apple Fritters
1 cup milk 2 eggs 1 teaspoon sugar Salt 2 cups flour 1 tablespoon baking-powder Apples To the milk add the well-beaten egg-yolks and the sugar, then the flour mixed and sifted with the baking-powder and the salt. Then fold in the stiffly beaten whites. Add sliced sour apples, being careful to get the batter all over them. Drop by spoonfuls into deep fat and fry.
A plain 1930s drop-batter fritter. The recipe names no fat temperature, no apple quantity and no salt measure, so those are the gaps to fill before you start.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives none. The usual modern working range for drop fritters is about 365-375F: much below that the batter drinks oil, and much hotter the coating browns before the apple inside softens.
- SaltTake the unmeasured salt as 1/2 teaspoon for this quantity of flour.
- ApplesReckon on two or three medium tart apples -- Granny Smith, Bramley or a firm russet. Peel, core and cut into rings about 1/4 inch thick or into thick wedges; thinner slices collapse into the batter.
- Baking powderA full tablespoon to two cups of flour is more than modern practice (about 2 teaspoons would do), but the batter is meant to puff hard the moment it hits the fat. Mix and fry promptly rather than letting it stand.
- Folding the whitesThe beaten whites are the only lightness besides the powder. Fold them in with a few strokes, leaving streaks, and do not stir the apples in vigorously afterwards.
- Batter consistencyThis makes a thick coating batter that should cling and just about level itself. If it slides off the apple, work in a spoonful or two more flour.
- Frying and drainingThree or four minutes total, turning once, until deep gold; the batter is thick enough to hide an underdone centre, so break one open to check. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp.
- Yield and servingAbout 18 to 20 fritters, enough for six. Dust with sifted sugar and cinnamon and serve at once; they lose their crispness quickly.
Fritters of this type -- a leavened milk-and-egg batter dropped in deep fat -- were a fixture of American home cooking from the nineteenth century onward, and were often served as a hot side dish alongside ham, sausage or pork, or as a way of using up windfall fruit. The insistence on "sour apples" is characteristic of the period: cooking apples were sharply distinguished from eating apples, and a tart, firm variety was expected to hold its shape and cut through the richness of the fried batter. New Delineator Recipes came out of the Butterick publishing house, better known for dress patterns, whose magazines carried household departments aimed at home cooks.