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Richest Crullers, or Fried Cakes
Good to keep, to send to folks by stage or express, or to ?pack up for a fishing party or a mountain climbing. Don't put any baking powder in them. 12 ounces of powdered sugar. 6 eggs. Flavoring. Half cup of milk. 6 ounces of butter. 2 pounds of flour.
Mix up like cake, by creaming the butter and sugar together, then beating in the eggs and milk and flour. Roll out, cut in shapes and fry. In addition to the foregoing, it may be useful to remember, all the rusks, buns and brioches can be fried as dougnuts when there happens to be more dough than is needed to bake.
A stiff, unleavened cruller dough built like a pound cake, meant to fry up dense enough to survive a week in a knapsack. Two things decide whether it works: the fat temperature and your willingness to leave the leavening out.
- No baking powder, and mean itThe instruction is deliberate. A leavened dough puffs and takes up more fat; this close-grained dough is likelier to keep, which suits a cake sent by express. Expect something nearer a shortbread twist than a doughnut.
- Powdered sugarIn American baking books of this era, powdered sugar generally means granulated sugar ground fine, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Ordinary granulated, or superfine, creams correctly here; confectioners' sugar will make the dough slack and sweeter-tasting.
- Weigh, don't scoop12 oz sugar is about 1 2/3 cups, 6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks, and 2 lb flour is roughly 7 cups. At those proportions the flour figure dominates everything, so a scale is worth using; a cup-measured 7 cups can easily run several ounces heavy.
- The dough will feel drySix eggs and half a cup of milk against two pounds of flour gives a very firm dough. That is intended for rolling and cutting, but flours have changed; add milk a spoonful at a time only if it will not come together, and let it rest 20 minutes before rolling so it hydrates and stops fighting the pin.
- FlavoringUnspecified, as was usual. Period choices were grated nutmeg, mace, lemon zest, or rose water; a teaspoon of nutmeg and the zest of a lemon suits this quantity.
- Frying fat and temperatureThe recipe says only 'fry', and lard in a deep kettle would have been the usual fat. Any neutral fat works at 360-375F. Below that the cakes drink fat and go greasy; above it the outside colors before the dense center cooks. Roll about 1/3 inch thick and fry three to four minutes, turning once.
- YieldAround four dozen crullers depending on your cutter. This is a full household batch; halving it is straightforward since every quantity divides evenly.
- The closing noteThe suggestion to fry surplus rusk, bun or brioche dough is sound and still worth doing, but those doughs are yeasted and will behave quite differently: they puff, cook faster, and want a slightly lower fat temperature, around 350F.
Crullers are generally said to have reached American kitchens through Dutch settlement in the Hudson Valley, where krullen is traditionally traced to a word meaning to curl, and the name attached to any twisted, cut or knotted piece of dough dropped into hot fat. What distinguishes this version is that it is a keeping cake rather than a breakfast one: the header frames it as travel food, for the stage, the express office, a fishing party or a climb. Before commercial packaged snacks, a rich unleavened fried cake was a sensible provision, since the sugar and butter kept it from drying, and the absence of leavening may also have helped it keep. The instruction to fry leftover rusk, bun and brioche dough turns a surplus into something saleable the same morning.