Home › The Belgian Kitchen › Semolina Fritters
Semolina Fritters
Quarter pound semolina, one and a half pints of milk, three eggs. Put on the milk, and, as soon as it is boiling, drop the semolina in, in a shower. Let it boil for a few minutes, stirring continually. Then add the yolks of three eggs, and then the whites, which you have already beaten stiff. Pour all on a dish, and cool. Have some boiling lard (it is boiling when it ceases to bubble), and throw into it spoonsful of the mixture. When they are fried golden, take them out, drain them a moment, and sprinkle on some white sugar. Speculoos (A Brussels recipe) Pound down half pound flour, four ounces brown sugar, three and a half ounces butter, a pinch of nutmeg, and the same of mace and cinnamon in powder. Add, as well, a pinch of bicarbonate of soda. Make the paste into a ball, and cover it with a fine linen or muslin cloth, and leave it till the following day. If you have no molds to press it in, cut it into diamonds or different shapes, and cook them in the oven on buttered trays. I believe waffle irons can be bought in London.
Gaufres from Brussels Mix in an earthern bowl half a pint of flour, five yolks of eggs, a coffee-spoonful of castor sugar, half pint of milk (fresh), adding a pinch of salt and of vanilla; then two ounces butter melted over hot water. Then beat up the whites of four eggs very stiffly, and add them. Butter a baking-tin or sheet (since English households have not got a gaufre-iron, which is double and closes up), and pour in your mixture, spreading it over the sheet. When the gaufre is nicely yellowed, take it out and powder it with sugar. But to render this recipe absolutely successful, the correct implement is necessary.
Three separate Brussels recipes have been run together on this page: semolina fritters, speculoos biscuits and gaufres. Treat them as three, and note that the imperial pint here is 20 fl oz, not 16.
- The hinge: chill the semolina hardThe hinge: cool the semolina thoroughly -- the recipe says only "pour all on a dish, and cool." It wants to be spread out and left until firm enough to lift with a spoon; warm or slack semolina will tend to disintegrate the moment it meets the fat.
- The milk-to-semolina ratio is generousFour ounces of semolina to an imperial pint and a half (30 fl oz) of milk gives a very loose porridge that sets softly at best. Cooking it down until it pulls away from the pan, or dropping the milk to a pint, gives something that holds a spoon shape.
- "Boiling lard"Fat does not boil; what the writer means is the point at which the bubbling from residual moisture stops. In practice fry at 350-375F, and test with a scrap of the mixture before committing a batch.
- Folding the whitesAdd the yolks off the heat, let the semolina cool a little, then fold the stiff whites in gently. If the pan is still near boiling the whites will simply cook into threads and the lightening is lost.
- Speculoos: "pound down" means work togetherThis is a dry, stiff spiced dough worked by hand or in a mortar rather than creamed. The recipe's overnight rest under a cloth is worth keeping; the dough handles and rolls more cleanly the next day.
- Speculoos ovenNo temperature is given. Bake at 325-350F until firm and dark at the edges, 10-15 minutes depending on thickness. Speculoos are meant to be crisp through, so err on the longer side and cool them flat.
- Gaufres: half a pint of flour is a volume, not a weightTen fluid ounces of flour scooped is roughly 1 1/4 cups, or about 5-6 oz. "Castor sugar" is superfine sugar; "a pinch of vanilla" may mean vanilla sugar or scraped pod, and a teaspoon of extract does the same work.
- The baking-sheet substitute does not workThe author admits as much ("the correct implement is necessary"). Poured onto a flat tray, gaufre batter bakes into a thin sheet cake, not a waffle. Use a waffle iron; this is a yeast-free batter lightened with beaten whites and it behaves normally in a modern iron.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest a couple of dozen spoon-sized fritters. Serve them hot, dusted with sugar, as the recipe intends; they are best eaten straight from the pan.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had come to Britain after the German invasion, and sold in aid of Belgian relief. The asides on this page give the situation away: the writer keeps apologising for equipment her English readers will not own, and offers the hopeful thought that waffle irons "can be bought in London." Speculoos are the spiced, molded biscuits associated with the feast of St Nicholas in early December, traditionally pressed into carved wooden boards bearing the saint's image; the name is generally traced either to the Latin speculum, mirror, for that impressed likeness, or to species, meaning spices. Gaufre is simply the French for waffle, and the semolina fritter belongs to the wide European family of thick milk puddings set firm, cut and fried, of which fried polenta and Italian latte fritto are cousins.