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Balloon Fritters
The boss fritters of the tribe. Crisp and fine. No limit to their swelling capacity but the size of the kettle. When made of the size of footballs the kettle has to be set in the oven to finish, because they merely float on top of the fat and cannot cook through. Weigh the starch; don't trust the packages for weight. 1 pint of milk. 1/2 pound of corn starch. 1 ounce of butter. 8 eggs. Little salt.
These are made same way as the "hardshells," except that the starch has to be mixed separately. Boil half the milk with the butter and salt in it, and mix the starch smooth with the other half; pour it in the saucepan and stir over the fire till it becomes a firm paste well cooked.
Beat the eggs in one at a time. Have fresh sweet lard moderately hot, and drop in pieces of the paste as large as guinea eggs, by pushing them off the point of a spoon. They need considerable time to fry. Serve with sauce; transparent, wine, brandy, lemon or custard. Makes about twenty-five or thirty.
This is a choux-type fritter batter with cornstarch standing in for flour, which is what gives the enormous puff and the brittle shell. Everything depends on cooking the paste properly and frying it low and slow.
- Weigh the cornstarchThe instruction to weigh rather than trust the box still holds: 1/2 pound is roughly 1 3/4 to 2 cups, and cornstarch packs unevenly. A scale removes the guesswork entirely.
- Fat temperature is the hingeThe recipe fixes no temperature; "moderately hot" points to fat cooler than the roughly 375F used for doughnuts, somewhere in the 325-350F range. These fritters swell greatly and need the interior to set before the crust colours; hotter fat gives a dark shell over raw paste.
- Size of the piecesA guinea egg is smaller than a hen's egg, roughly the size of a large walnut. Push off pieces of about a tablespoon and leave plenty of room in the kettle, since they expand dramatically and will collide.
- "Considerable time to fry"Expect well beyond a quick fry, several minutes a batch, turning as they roll. They should be deep gold and feel light and hollow; underfried centres collapse into a wet paste as they cool.
- The football warningThe note about setting the kettle in the oven applies only to show-sized fritters, which float and cannot cook through. At normal size no oven step is needed.
- Cooking the pasteSlurry the starch with the cold half of the milk before it meets heat, or it will seize into lumps. Cook the combined mixture until it is stiff, glossy and pulls from the pan, then beat in the eggs one at a time off the heat so they thicken rather than scramble.
- Fat choiceFresh lard was the standard frying medium and gives the cleanest flavour, but any neutral fat with a high smoke point works. "Sweet" simply means not rancid.
- Yield and servingAbout 25-30 fritters, enough for six to eight. There is no sugar in the paste, which is why every sauce named is a sweet one; serve hot, since they are best straight from the kettle.
Fritters built on a cooked paste of milk, butter, starch and eggs belong to the same family as p e te