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Tomato Fritters
1 egg 1 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 1/4 cup butter 1/2 cup corn-starch Cook first four ingredients twenty minutes, rub all through a sieve except seeds, and season with salt and pepper. Melt butter, and when bubbling, add corn-starch and tomato gradually; cook two minutes, then add egg slightly beaten. Pour into a buttered shallow tin, and cool. Turn on a board, cut in squares, diamonds, or strips. Roll in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, fry in deep fat, and drain.
A panada-style croquette: thickened tomato purée set firm in a pan, cut, breaded and deep-fried. The technique is sound, though the ingredient list as printed is incomplete and the tomato quantity has to be judged.
- The missing tomatoThe method calls for tomato cooked twenty minutes and sieved, but no quantity appears in the list. Comparable Farmer purée-fritters use roughly 2 1/2 cups of stewed or canned tomato with a slice of onion and a sprig of parsley, reduced hard; treat that as a starting point rather than a transcription of the original.
- Reduce further than feels rightThis is the hinge. The sieved tomato must be thick enough to leave a clean trail behind the spoon before the starch goes in, or the slab will never set firm enough to cut and will burst in the fat.
- Corn-starch, not flourHalf a cup of corn-starch to something like two-and-a-half cups of liquid gives a stiff, sliceable gel rather than a sauce; do not substitute flour, which sets softer and can taste raw at this ratio.
- Cook two minutes means two minutesCornstarch thickens fully and loses its chalkiness almost immediately after it reaches a boil. Longer cooking, especially with acid tomato, breaks the gel down and the mixture will slump as it cools.
- The egg goes in off the boilAdd the beaten egg with the pan pulled from the heat and stir briskly. At a simmer it scrambles into visible threads that show up as flecks in the finished fritter.
- Chilling time"Cool" means thoroughly cold. Spread about 3/4 inch deep in the buttered tin and refrigerate at least two hours, or overnight; a barely-cool slab tears when cut and again when breaded.
- Frying temperatureDeep fat for these should be 375F. Cooler and the crumb coating soaks; hotter and the crust colours before the soft interior has warmed through. Fry in small batches, about two minutes, and drain on paper.
- Yield and servingThe mixture fills a shallow tin and cuts into something over a dozen pieces, depending how thick it is spread; serve as an entree course in the older sense — a small hot dish served between heavier courses, or alongside roast or broiled meat.
Fritters of this kind belong to the family of croquettes built on a panada, a stiff starch-bound paste that is chilled until sliceable, then crumbed and fried. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book is full of them, in tomato, chicken, rice and hominy versions, because they suited a household economy that valued a small hot savoury dish able to stretch a modest amount of flavourful material across a table. The entrée section of American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s reflects the French service the Boston Cooking School taught: not a main course, but a light course of its own. Tomato in particular was available canned year-round, which made a purée easy.