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Fritter Beans
1 egg 2 tablespoons milk ¾ teaspoon salt 1/2 cup flour Beat egg until light, add milk, salt, and flour. Put through colander or pastry tube into deep fat, and fry until brown; drain on brown paper.
Pâte à Choux 2½ tablespoons milk ½ teaspoon lard ½ teaspoon butter 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup flour 1 egg Heat butter, lard, and milk to boiling-point, add flour and salt, and stir vigorously. Remove from fire, add egg unbeaten, and stir until well mixed. Cool, and drop small pieces from tip of teaspoon into deep fat. Fry until brown and crisp, and drain on brown paper.
Parmesan Pâte à Choux To Pâte à Choux mixture add two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese.
These are fried soup garnishes, not a dish in themselves: crisp specks of batter scattered over a puree or cream soup at the table. Both mixtures are quick, but they must go into properly hot fat or they drink it.
- Fat temperature"Deep fat" is unquantified here; period practice was to test with a cube of bread or a drop of batter, which should rise and colour briskly rather than sink. Modern deep-frying guidance for such batters runs around 375F. Fat that is too cool lets the batter absorb oil and slump.
- Shaping the beansPressing the thin egg batter through a colander gives irregular droplets the size of small beans, which may be the source of the name. A piping bag with a plain small tip gives more uniform pieces; a slotted spoon held over the fat works as well.
- Salt quantityThe salt figure in the first mixture is garbled in this printing; "34" is most likely ¾ (or possibly ¼) teaspoon. For one egg and a half cup of flour, something in the quarter- to three-quarter-teaspoon range is plausible.
- Pâte à choux proportionsThe milk and lard quantities in the choux paste are garbled. A workable version of this small batch is about 2 1/2 tablespoons milk with a half teaspoon each of butter and lard, brought to a boil before the flour goes in.
- Adding the eggThe egg goes in unbeaten and off the heat; the recipe cools the paste after the egg is stirred in, before dropping it into the fat. Letting the pan stand a moment off the fire first guards against the egg setting into threads.
- DrainingBrown paper was the standard drain of the period; a rack over a sheet pan keeps them crisper than paper of any kind, which traps steam underneath.
- Yield and timingEither mixture is a small batch, enough to garnish a few bowls. They are best fried shortly before serving and re-crisped briefly in a low oven if they soften.
- The Parmesan versionGrated Parmesan browns fast in hot fat. Fry those pieces a shade paler than the plain ones and expect them to darken as they drain.
Farmer's soup chapters carry a long list of these small fried and baked accompaniments -- croutons, noodles, custard cut in dice, and fritter beans. The German kitchen has a near twin in Backerbsen, literally "baked peas," batter droplets fried and floated on broth, and the English name looks like a direct translation of that idea. The pâte he same paste used for cream puffs and y service: fried rather than baked, it puffs into hollow crisp nuggets, and the Parmesan variation is a small step toward the cheese gougère of Burgundy. Lard alongside butter in the choux is a period marker; it was the cheaper fat and gave a crisper result, and most household books of 1900 assumed a cook had both on hand.