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Banana Fritters
6 bananas 2 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons orange-juice Fritter batter Peel bananas, cut each in two and split each half. Place the pieces in a bowl with sugar and orange-juice and let them stand for one hour. Drain the fruit, dip in batter and fry in deep fat.
A simple macerate-and-fry recipe from the era when "fritter batter" was assumed to be a standing preparation in every cook's repertoire. Two things decide the outcome: how dry the fruit is when it meets the batter, and how steady the fat is.
- The batter is elsewhereThe recipe assumes the book's basic fritter batter, given separately. A standard one is about 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, a pinch of salt, 1 egg and 2/3 cup milk, beaten smooth and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- Fat temperature"Deep fat" for fritters is conventionally around 375F, tested by browning a bread cube in about 40 seconds. Below 350F the batter drinks oil; above 400F it colors before the banana heats through.
- Dry the fruit properlyThis is the hinge. After the hour in sugar and orange juice the pieces are wet and syrupy, and batter slides off wet fruit into the fat. Drain in a sieve, then blot each piece on a towel before dipping.
- Choose firm bananasUse fruit that is just ripe and still firm at the tip. Very soft bananas are apt to break up during the maceration hour and can be hard to lift out whole.
- Cut size"Cut each in two and split each half" gives four pieces per banana, roughly finger-length batons -- 24 fritters from six bananas, enough for six to eight servings.
- Frying and drainingFry a few at a time so the fat stays hot, turning once, two to three minutes total until deep gold. Lift onto a rack rather than paper if you want the coating to stay crisp.
- ServingThe original stops at the fryer. These want to be eaten within minutes, dusted with confectioners' sugar, or with the drained orange-and-sugar liquid boiled down briefly into a thin syrup.
Fritters occupy an ambiguous place in American cookbooks of this period, appearing sometimes among entrees and made-over dishes and sometimes among desserts. Bananas were widely available by the 1920s, when United Fruit's steamship and rail network had made them one of the cheaper fruits in the country, sold year-round in cities that saw fresh peaches for six weeks. The hour's soak in sugar and orange juice seasons the fruit; similar macerations are applied to apples and pineapple in other fritter recipes of the day.