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Transparent Fritters
Crisp. White. Good to use up whites of eggs left out of muffins, custard, etc., wherein they do no good. Serve with red wine sauce, or lemon juice and sugar. 1/2 pint of milk, or water. 3 ounces of butter, or lard. 3 ounces of corn starch. 1/2 pound of white of eggs (9 whites).
Make as directed for other starch fritters. Fry slowly. If the batter is beaten too much after the whites are all in, the fritters are liable to explode when near done. (They never explode on the table--no danger.) We now come to cheese puffs and creams. In the great majority of instances when anything made with cheese appears in a bill of fare, the kind named is Parmesan. Besides this, the cook is directed to use various other foreign cheeses, according to what the purpose may be. In Italian cookery, one writer observes, "several varieties of cheese are much employed: such as the cheese of Switzerland and Savoy, under different names; and Parmesan (named from Parma), though it is made in all the north of Italy, and particularly in Lombardy. Gruyere cheese is, however, most used throughout Europe; Parmesan is twice or thrice the price out of Italy. In Italy, a plateful of grated cheese is mostly served with the soup, when each guest takes what he likes and mixes it on his own plate."
Another writer says: "My friends had two surprises of which I myself had not thought--Parmesan served with the soupe, and a glass of dry madeira after. These were two novelties lately imported (into France) by Prince Talleyrand, the first of our diplomatists, to whom we owe so many wise and witty sayings, etc."
Every well regulated hotel storeroom of course has all the different varieties of cheese on shelf, properly labeled, so that the cook can have all the world before him where to choose. But those who live where it is found difficult to obtain anything but American cheese, if they have not already read it, will be gratified and interested in reading the following, from "Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving." "Among the best cheeses of England are the Stilton and Cheshire; of France, are those of Neufchatel Brie and Roquefort. The Iromage de Roquefort is, perhaps, one of the most popular of all cheeses. The Gruyere cheese of Switzerland is also a well known cheese. It is made from new milk, and flavored with a powdered herb. The Roquefort cheese is made of a mixture of sheep's and goat's milk. The Parmesan (an Italian cheese) is made of skimmed milk. It is a high-flavored and hard cheese, and is not sent to market until it is six months old, and is often kept three or four years. It is extensively used, grated, for cooking.
Our American cheeses, since the introduction of the factory system, are exported in immense quantities to England, where they are much ought for, and considered by epicures as great luxuries. This is generally astonishing to Americans abroad, who, at home, often consider it only in rule to offer guests cheese of foreign manufacture.
Perhaps the cheapest of the foreign famous cheeses is the Neufchatel. It comes in little rolls about an inch thick and three inches long, is enveloped in tinfoil and costs about twenty cents a roll.
The tariff may be saved by purchasing the Neufchatel manufactured in New Jersey and Westchester County, New York. As for that, the Stilton made in Cayuga county can hardly be dected from the Leicestershire manufacture itself; and in fact, nearly all the famous cheeses are very perfectly imitated in America, so that those who choose may indulge in foreign names and encourage home manufacture at the same time."
The moral to be drawn from the preceding extract is that for cooking purposes at least; American cheese will do very well, even for dishes au Parmesan, or a la Parmesane.
A cornstarch panada fritter, closer to a fried choux than to a batter-dipped one. The original assumes you have already read the author's method for "other starch fritters," so the sequence matters more than the quantities.
- The method being referencedStarch fritters of this period are built like a panada: bring the liquid and fat to a boil, rain in the starch, and stir over heat until the paste leaves the sides of the pan in one mass. Let it cool to warm before the whites go in, or they cook on contact and the paste turns granular.
- Measures in modern termsHalf a pint is 1 cup. Three ounces of butter is 6 tablespoons. Three ounces of cornstarch is roughly 2/3 cup, but weigh it if you can, as cornstarch packs unpredictably.
- Half a pound of whitesThe parenthetical "9 whites" works out to roughly 0.9 oz per white, a shade under a modern large white (about 1 oz or a little more). Weigh out 8 oz rather than counting to nine.
- The hingeBeat the whites in only until each addition disappears. Overbeaten batter traps too much air, the interior steam has nowhere to go, and the fritters burst in the fat. This is the one warning the author bothers to give.
- "Fry slowly"The book gives no temperature; read it as moderate rather than hot fat, in the region of 325F. Hotter fat sets the shell before the inside has expanded and dried, which is the other route to a burst fritter. They should swell, roll over, and take on only the faintest colour.
- Why "transparent"Cooked cornstarch is translucent rather than opaque, and with no yolks the interior stays glassy and pale. Do not brown them; browning defeats the whole point of the dish.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity of batter makes a couple of dozen small fritters. Serve straight from the fat with the red wine sauce, or simply with lemon and sugar as suggested.
- The cheese passageEverything after the frying note is the author's editorial bridge into the next section on cheese puffs, quoted largely from another cookbook. None of it belongs to these fritters.
Cornstarch fritters like this one belong to the American factory age: refined cornstarch became a cheap, reliable pantry staple after the middle of the nineteenth century, and it served as a bland substitute for flour in panada work. The appeal here is thrift: a kitchen turning out custards, muffins and glazes accumulated leftover whites, and this recipe exists to convert that surplus into something usable, the author noting bluntly that the whites "do no good" in the dishes they were separated from. The name describes the result rather than any place of origin, cooked cornstarch being translucent where a wheat batter is opaque, and the yolkless batter keeping it white. The rambling essay on Parmesan, Gruyere, Roquefort and Cayuga County Stilton that follows is typical of the book's construction: these were working manuals assembled from quotations and extracts from other cookbooks, with the compiler's own commentary stitched between recipes.