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Batter III (Medium-sized sour apples)
2 medium-sized sour apples Powdered sugar Pare, core, and cut apples in eighths, then cut eighths in slices, and stir into batter. Drop by spoonfuls and fry in deep fat (see Rules for Testing Fat, page 21). Drain on brown paper, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve hot on a folded napkin.
A fritter recipe that assumes you have already turned back a page: the batter itself is a cross-reference, and everything here hinges on the fat being at the right heat.
- The missing batter"Batter III" is one of the numbered fritter batters given earlier in the book, so this entry is only the fruit and the frying. A fritter batter will behave as intended if it is thick enough to coat the apple and hold a spoonful together.
- Fat temperatureThe book's "Rules for Testing Fat" use a bread cube: browning in sixty seconds indicates the correct heat for uncooked mixtures such as this one. The book gives no figure in degrees; modern equivalents put it somewhere around 350-365F. Below that the batter drinks fat; much above it the outside colors before the apple softens.
- Sour applesThis means a tart cooking apple, not a spoiled one. Granny Smith, Northern Spy, Bramley or any firm acid variety holds its shape and balances the sugar; sweet modern eating apples turn bland and mushy.
- Cut thinEighths sliced again gives thin wedges, which matters because the apple has only the three or four minutes the batter needs to brown. Thick chunks come out raw at the center.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period "powdered sugar" sometimes meant finely ground granulated rather than today's cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar. Either finishes the dish; confectioners' clings better to a hot fritter.
- Brown paperUnbleached wrapping paper was the standard drain. Paper towels or, better, a wire rack over a sheet pan keep the underside from steaming soft.
- The folded napkinServing on a napkin was both presentation and blotting. It also signals that these must go to the table immediately — fritters collapse and go leathery within minutes of leaving the fat.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; two apples in a batch of batter should make something on the order of a dozen fritters, enough for a small course.
The word fritter comes into English through Old French friture or fritour, from the Late Latin frictura, and batter-dipped fruit is one of the oldest uses of deep fat in European cooking. Fannie Farmer's contribution was less the dish than the discipline around it — the numbered batters, the cross-references, and above all the bread-cube test for fat, which she did not invent — it was already circulating in cookery writing before her book — but which in her hands gave home cooks a repeatable way to judge temperature decades before a kitchen thermometer was a common object.