Bismarcks
Large doughnuts of the plain sort, with a teaspoonful of stewed fruit inside, cut out like thin biscuits, allowed to rise and then fried. A Book of Puffs, Eclairs and Cream Fillings.
Sooner or later it was morally certain these things would get into the papers; the common darkness surrounding the subject and the many innocent deceptions practiced for that reason makes this necessary.
For bills-of-fare may promise fairly enough, but there is not the least certainty that the promised puff fritter will come to table puffy, and it is different with it than with almost anything else in this world; we are accustomed to speak of hollow frauds and hollow mockeries, but a puff fritter is only a fraud when it is not hollow, and you can never properly call a puff fritter your "solid," unless it is a solid mockery of what it ought to be. There are at least a dozen cooks in Sleepy Hollow who can not make puff fritters hollow, and possibly the most of them do not even know what they are, and yet would resent any hint that they are not first-class cooks. But they are not the only ones. There was a cook of considerable repute, who ran for several successive seasons on that splendid steamer, the Aberbrothock, and he made it a point to have what he called bell fritters, for one of his "sweet entrees" always for the last dinner of the trip.
He went through the motions of making puff fritters, and he made a nice spongy sort of an article, but nobody could see why it was called bell fritter, because it was not "hollow as a bell," and had not even a space inside big enough to hang the smallest kind of a clapper. But one day, by some accident, he got the proportions just right, and, to his astonishment, when he dropped the fritters into the hot lard, they presently began to swell. The pieces of the paste he dropped in were as big as goose eggs at first, which was entirely too large in any case, but he had not been used to seeing them increase much. But this time they swelled and they swelled, and by the time they had attained to the size of canteloup melons, and the two at the bottom had hoisted all the rest and were about to pitch them over, the cook was thoroughly scared; he thought Old Nick was inside them, and, hastily seizing the saucepan by the handle, he threw it and the whole caboodle out of the cook-house window. Puff fritters, or, rather, the want of them, was the cause of a good deal of unhappiness at the Scylla Cottages, on the dreamy Southern coast. It is noted the world over for its location upon the very verge of Percival's beautiful coral grove, where the purple mullet and the gold-fish rove, and is only a two hours' easy boat-row from the Isle of Calms, where the sea throws up some new and exquisite tropical shells every day, and Morris's folks, in pensive thought, can wander on the sea-beat shore in an atmosphere of perpetual Spring. But there had to be some eating done even in Eden, and the Scylla Cottages were kept as an hotel by an estimable landlady. She prided herself upon her life-long experience in housekeeping.
Her regular patrons from the North, who arrived punctually each year just before New Year's, had discovered a spell to keep her in subjection. "What society shall we have this year? Whom do you expect?"--and then--"Have you found a cook yet who can make those delightful souffle fritters? Oh, they make them so elegantly at Long Branch! And you did not succeed with the receipt we sent you? Dear me--and we procured it from one of the most celebrated cooks, it must have been right. Why, they make them over there at the Charybdis Hotel, perhaps as elegantly as our cooks do at Long Branch, and that is quite a splendid place, the Charybdis, but we seem to have become attached to this spot. O, if you only had a really good cook!"
Of course these intellectual people were not in earnest; nobody cares for a fritter, more or less, but they knew that in this way they could infuse gall and bitterness into somebody's life, and when they were good natured they played the subject for sport, and when they were really mean through eating too much green turtle, they rung the changes for pure spite. They would even go over for a day or two to the Charybdis Hotel, which is really a very fine place, with splendid shell roads and two-forty nags to drive on them; magnificent rows of magnolias, fig orchards and oranges; but, being a literary and artist sort of crowd, they better liked the atmosphere of the Isle of Calms, for "the nightingales sing round it all the day long," and the Southern sunsets from that point are most gorgeous.
As to the Charybdis Hotel fritters, they were hollow, it is true, but they were little, old hardshell things, and whenever they were served the guests had to be furnished with nut-crackers to break them with. And yet, that cook was so proud of them that he guarded the secret of making them from the boys as carefully as if he had discovered a new Aladdin's cave. He needed not have been so careful. If there were any use of it, no doubt but as many as fifty varieties of hollow fritters could be made. The key to the whole matter is this:
If you make a very stiff, smooth, cooked paste of flour, then work in gradually about half its weight of raw eggs you have a fritter paste that when dropped in hot lard will swell, and each piece become as hollow as an egg shell. Any other substance, corn starch, corn meal, banana pulp, fruit pulp of any kind, cheese, almost anything smooth will act the same way, either alone or mixed with flour. We shall have more to say about this when we come to souffle pudding But these simple foundations are not particularly good eating, and have to be enriched. Their tendency to puff up is already at the strongest, and whatever is added must be so balanced--more eggs against more butter and sugar--as not to destroy it. In things like these requiring exact proportions it may make a difference if the eggs used be unusually large or small. There is no magic in the number; it is weight you want. Ten eggs average a pound. And it may make a difference, too, if the water be allowed to boil away after being measured. The receipt next following gives the kind that was made by the Charybdis Hotel cook, and which he was so afraid lest anyone should find out. They used to be called Baptist fritters, because they are never truly good until they have been immersed--in syrup. In campmeeting countries where they are sold on the grounds by measure, the statute requires them to weigh four pounds to the bushel. They can be made to weigh less if made larger. The number of eggs in the receipt is left optional. The Charybdis man only used four because they were dear, and he had to carefully round off the fritters as he dropped them, because while the rich kinds will smooth themselves in the frying fat, these only come out with all the rough corners magnified. You will like them with six eggs, and are not obliged to furnish nut-crackers, even with the other proportion.