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Crullers
1/4 cup butter 1 cup sugar Yolks 2 eggs Whites 2 eggs. 4 cups flour ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg 3½ teaspoons baking powder 1 cup milk Powdered sugar and cinnamon Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, yolks of eggs well beaten, and whites of eggs beaten stiff. Mix flour, nutmeg, and baking powder; add alternately with milk to first mixture; toss on floured board, roll thin, and cut in pieces three inches long by two inches wide; make four one-inch parallel gashes crosswise at equal intervals. Take up by running finger in and out of gashes, and lower into deep fat. Fry same as Doughnuts I.
Strawberry Short Cake I 2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons sugar 3/4 cup milk 1/4 cup butter Mix dry ingredients, sift twice, work in butter with tips of fingers, and add milk gradually. Toss on floured board, divide in two parts. Pat, roll out, and bake twelve minutes in a hot oven in buttered Washington pie or round layer cake tins. Split, and spread with butter. Sweeten strawberries to taste, place on back of range until warmed, crush slightly, and put between and on top of Short Cakes; cover top with Cream Sauce I.
Two recipes have run together in this transcription, and the cruller ingredient list has lost several of its quantities to the printer. Read it as a method rather than a complete formula.
- Missing quantitiesThe ingredient list gives no amount for butter, sugar or eggs, though the method creams butter with sugar and calls for separated eggs. The nutmeg and baking powder figures were checked against the printed page and read as our text now gives them. Work from a complete cruller recipe for the missing amounts and use these instructions for the shaping and frying.
- Fry same as Doughnuts IIn modern terms that means deep fat in the region of 365-375F. Farmer judged the fat by browning a cube of bread; for an uncooked mixture such as this her test is the slower one, around a minute, not the forty seconds used for already-cooked mixtures. A thermometer is easier. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop too far, and turn once.
- The gashes are the whole pointFour one-inch cuts across the strip, then lift the piece by weaving a finger in and out of the slits. That stretch is what opens the lattice; if you lift the strip flat it fries as a slab. Roll thin, about 1/4 inch, or the centre stays raw.
- Sugar and cinnamonPowdered sugar and cinnamon are listed but never mentioned again. Dust them on while the crullers are still warm, after a minute on paper to shed surface fat.
- YieldFour cups of flour makes a large batch of strips three inches by two; the count depends entirely on how thin the dough is rolled, and the book does not state it.
- Washington pie tinThe recipe itself equates it with a round layer cake tin. "Hot oven" in books of this period corresponds to roughly 400-450F, and twelve minutes at that heat suits a thin shortcake.
- Warming the strawberries"Place on back of range" means the coolest part of a wood range - low, indirect heat to draw juice without cooking the fruit. The lowest burner setting for a few minutes, or simply letting sugared berries stand at room temperature, does the same.
- Cream Sauce INot the savoury white sauce. The cross-reference is to a sweet cream sauce in the dessert sauces; look it up rather than assuming, as it is a creamed butter, sugar and cream mixture rather than plain whipped cream.
The name is generally traced to Dutch krulle, a curl or twist, and the cruller is usually said to have reached American kitchens through the Dutch households of New York and the Hudson valley, where fried doughs were associated with winter and Shrovetide. What distinguishes the cruller from the doughnut in books of this period is not the batter, which is close kin, but the shaping: a flat strip slashed and stretched into a lattice rather than a ring. The recipe sits among the biscuits, breakfast cakes and shortcakes, alongside the quick chemical leavens - the baking powder here doing work that yeast did in older Dutch fried doughs. The book's habit of cross-referencing ("fry same as Doughnuts I") is characteristic of the Boston Cooking School method, which taught a technique once and expected it to be carried from recipe to recipe.