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Raspberry Fritters
3 eggs 1/2 cup water 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon baking-powder 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups raspberries Add beaten egg-yolks and water to flour sifted with baking-powder and salt. Beat raspberries with egg-beater. Beat egg-whites to a stiff froth, fold into batter, then fold in the fruit. Drop by spoonfuls into deep fat. When golden brown, drain and dredge with powdered sugar.
A simple fritter batter leavened twice, by baking powder and by stiffly beaten whites, with crushed raspberries folded in at the last moment. The batter is thin and the fruit is wet, so the fat temperature is what decides whether these come out light or greasy.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; for a dropped batter fritter, somewhere around 360-375F is the usual modern working range. Below that the batter drinks oil before it sets; above it the outside colors before the inside cooks. A thermometer is worth more here than any timing.
- The saltA full teaspoon of salt in one cup of flour reads high for a sweet fritter and may be a printing slip for a half or quarter teaspoon. Taste the batter before frying and judge for yourself.
- Beating the raspberriesRunning the berries through an egg-beater crushes them to a rough pulp with juice. Do it in a separate bowl and fold it in last, after the whites, as the recipe directs, or the added liquid will slacken the batter and knock the air out.
- Batter consistencyOne cup of flour with three yolks and a half cup of water gives a loose batter that spreads in the fat. If the crushed fruit makes it too thin to hold a spoonful, add flour a tablespoon at a time rather than more berries.
- Frying in batchesDrop no more than four or five spoonfuls at once. Each addition drops the oil temperature, and a crowded pot means pale, oil-logged fritters. Let the fat come back up between batches.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than flat on paper so steam escapes from underneath and the crust stays crisp.
- Sugaring and timingDredge with confectioners' sugar while still warm so it clings, and serve immediately. Fritters of this type soften and toughen quickly as they stand.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity of batter and fruit suggests enough for four to six as a dessert or a sweet course, the count depending on the size of the spoonful.
Fritters occupy an odd place in books of this era: they turn up under entrees and made-over dishes as well as under desserts, the batter-and-deep-fat method being applied to fruit as readily as to leftover meat or rice. The word comes through Old French friture, from Latin frigere, to fry, and the form is ancient across Europe. The double leavening here — chemical baking powder plus beaten whites — is characteristic of American home cookery after commercial baking powder and the rotary egg-beater had become widely available. Raspberries, being fragile and briefly in season, were a natural candidate for a dish that turns soft fruit into something substantial enough to serve as a course.