Home › Recipes › Calumet Crullers
Calumet Crullers
2 egg yolks, well beaten 2 egg whites, beaten stiff 4 cups flour 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg 21/2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1 cup milk Cream sugar and egg yolks and add egg whites. Sift together thoroughly flour, nutmeg and baking powder, and add alternately with milk to first mixture. Place on floured board, roll thin, and cut in pieces 3 inches long by 2 inches wide; make four 1-inch gashes at equal intervals. Take up by running finger in and out of gashes and lower into deep fat. Take up on a skewer, drain on brown paper, and roll in powdered sugar, if desired. (Illustration, page 12.) CALUMET DOUGHNUTS-No. 1 4 cups of pastry flour 3 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon of salt 1 cup of sugar 2 eggs, beaten together 2 tablespoons of melted butter 1 cup of milk Sift flour, then measure, add baking powder and salt and sift three times, rub sugar and butter together, add well-beaten eggs, then flour and milk alternately. Turn out on a well-floured board and roll out 1/2 inch thick. Cut with doughnut cutter and fry in boiling hot fat. Vanilla or cinnamon may be added. (See illustration, page 12.) 3 cups flour 1 cup sugar CALUMET DOUGHNUTS-No. 2 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 well beaten eggs 1 tablespoon melted butter Enough milk to make medium stiff dough Sift baking powder, flour and salt together thoroughly. Rub butter, sugar and eggs together until smooth, and add them to flour and baking powder, with enough sweet milk to make dough stiff enough to be easily handled without sticking. Roll out ½ inch thick, cut in rings or small balls and fry brown in a deep kettle of smoking hot fat, as directed for fritter batter. Quantities of sugar, shortening and eggs can be varied to suit the taste, and if required, nutmeg, vanilla or other flavors can be added, or they can be rolled in powdered sugar when cold. (See illustration, page 12.)
Three fried doughs from a baking-powder company's promotional book, printed together with a shared illustration. The cruller ingredient list has come through incomplete, which matters more than anything else here.
- The cruller list is missing amountsAs printed, the crullers give nutmeg, baking powder and milk but no flour, sugar or egg quantities, though the method calls for all three. There is no honest way to reconstruct them; use Doughnuts No. 1 as the dough and cut it by the cruller method instead.
- Calumet baking powderA phosphate-and-alum powder; the brand is still made and sold, now as a double-acting powder, and any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure. "Level teaspoons" is worth taking literally — these are high-leavening doughs and a heaped spoon tends to leave a bitter, soapy aftertaste.
- Pastry flourDoughnuts No. 1 specifies pastry flour, which is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose. Substitute all-purpose with a tablespoon or so per cup replaced by cornstarch (the full two-tablespoon swap gives something closer to cake flour), or accept a slightly chewier doughnut.
- Sift, then measureThe instruction to sift before measuring is not decorative. Sifted flour scooped into a cup weighs noticeably less than packed flour, and following the order given keeps these doughs from turning stiff and dry.
- "Boiling hot" and "smoking hot" fatFat does not boil; the period phrase means the temperature at which a bread cube browns in about a minute. Work at 365-375F. Smoking fat is above that and will darken the outside before the centre sets.
- The cruller shapeFour one-inch cuts down a 3-by-2-inch rectangle, then the strip is lifted on a finger threaded through alternating slits so it twists open in the fat. Cut clean through to the board or the gashes seal shut and you get a flat plank.
- Frying timeRoughly a minute a side for the thin crullers, two to three minutes total for half-inch doughnuts, turning once. Fry six or so at a time; crowding drops the fat temperature and the dough absorbs grease.
- Brown paperGrocery-bag paper was the standard drain. Paper towels over a rack do the job better. Roll in powdered sugar while barely warm, not hot, or it dissolves to syrup.
- YieldDoughnuts No. 1 makes about two dozen rings plus holes. Both are best within a few hours.
Reliable Recipes was a promotional cookbook issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, founded in the late 1880s and later absorbed into General Foods — hence the brand name attached to every leavened item on the page. Crullers reached American kitchens through Dutch settlement, the name generally traced to a Dutch word for a curl or twist, and the older versions were raised with yeast or with beaten eggs alone. What the Calumet book is selling is the shortcut: chemical leavening turned the cruller and the doughnut from an occasional, time-dependent project into something a cook could start and finish in an hour. The presence of two numbered doughnut recipes, one with fixed milk and one with "enough milk to make medium stiff dough," also shows the period mid-transition — the second is written the way a mother taught a daughter, the first the way a company wanted its product measured.