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Jolly Boys
I CUP RYE MEAL 2 TEASPOONS BAKING POWDER 1/2 TEASPOON SALT Whip everything together and drop big spoonfuls into deep fat which has been heated until blue smoke rises.
A fried drop batter of the New England rye-and-Indian family, given here in the barest possible outline. Two things need attention before you start: the batter as printed has nothing wet in it, and the frying temperature as printed is past the point where fat should be used.
- The batter needs liquidA cup of rye meal, baking powder and salt is a dry mix, not something that can be whipped or dropped from a spoon. Recipes of this type are often slackened with sour milk or buttermilk and sweetened with a little molasses; work to a thick drop batter that just holds its shape on the spoon.
- Blue smoke is too hotFat that has gone past white wisps to blue smoke is breaking down and close to catching. Fry at 365-375F, which will brown a cube of bread in about a minute, and let the temperature recover between batches.
- Rye meal, not rye flourRye meal is coarsely ground whole rye, closer in texture to cornmeal than to flour. Modern dark or pumpernickel rye flour will work but gives a denser, gummier crumb; whole rye meal from a mill or a natural-foods aisle is truer.
- Baking powder quantityTwo teaspoons to one cup of meal is generous by modern standards; one and a half teaspoons of double-acting powder is plenty, and the batter should go into the fat promptly once mixed.
- Drop size"Big spoonfuls" fry unevenly in deep fat. A rounded tablespoon gives a cake that cooks through in three to four minutes, turning once; anything much larger browns outside before the centre sets.
- Draining and servingLift onto a rack rather than paper so the crust stays crisp, and eat them hot. Traditional accompaniments are butter, molasses or maple syrup.
- YieldOne cup of meal makes roughly a dozen small cakes -- two or three servings alongside a stew or as a breakfast dish.
Jolly boys belong to the older New England habit of frying quick batters of rye and cornmeal, the two grains that grew reliably in a short northern season when wheat did not. Recipes under the name turn up in nineteenth-century American cookery alongside rye drop cakes and "rye and Indian" bread, usually leavened with sour milk and soda and sweetened with molasses, a standard household sweetener of the period. A batter of meal, leavening and whatever liquid is at hand can be mixed in one pot and fried in the same deep fat used for fish, which is one reason fried breads recur in camp cookery. The instruction that the fat show blue smoke reflects a time before thermometers were common in kitchens, when cooks judged frying heat by sight.