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Bread Fritters
985. Pick, wash, and dry half a pound of Zante currants, and, having spread them out on a flat dish, dredge them well with flour. Grate some bread into a pan till you have a pint of crumbs. Pour over the grated bread a pint of boiling milk, in which has been stirred, as soon as taken from the fire, a piece of fresh butter the size of an egg. Cover the pan, and let it stand an hour. Then beat it hard, and add nutmeg and a quarter of a pound of powdered white sugar, stirred in gradually, and two table-spoonfuls of the best brandy. Beat six eggs till very light, and then stir them by degrees into the mixture. Lastly, add the currants, a few at a time; and beat the whole very hard. It should be a thick batter. If it turns out too thin, add a little flour. Have ready over the fire a hot frying-pan with boiling lard, Put in the batter in large spoonfuls (so as not to touch), and fry the fritters a light brown. Drain them on a perforated skimmer, or an inverted sieve placed in a deep pan, and send them to table hot. Serve them with wine and powdered sugar.
A rich bread-crumb batter fritter, closer to a doughnut than to a pancake. The soaking step is what makes it work: the crumbs must fully swell before anything else goes in.
- Soak first, no shortcutsThe hour under a lid is the hinge of the recipe. Fresh crumbs pour boiling milk absorb it and collapse into a smooth paste, which is what holds the batter together without much flour. Rushing it leaves gritty lumps that break apart in the fat.
- Grated breadThis means crumbs torn or grated from a stale loaf, not dry packaged breadcrumbs, which absorb far less liquid. A pint measure of fresh crumbs weighs roughly 4 oz. Keep crumbs and milk in equal volume and adjust at the end.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or half a stick.
- Zante currantsTiny dried grapes, sold now simply as currants. They are not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Dredging them in flour keeps them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the batter.
- Frying fat and temperatureThe recipe says only 'boiling lard'; in practice fat around 350-360F works. The batter is heavy with sugar and eggs, so hotter fat browns the outside before the centre sets. Test with one spoonful before committing the batch.
- Spoonful sizeA rounded serving spoon gives fritters that cook through in a few minutes, turned once. Larger blobs risk staying raw in the middle. Fry only a few at a time so the fat temperature holds.
- DrainingThe inverted sieve in a deep pan is simply a draining rack; a wire rack over a tray does the same job and is better than paper, which traps steam and softens the crust.
- Serving"With wine and powdered sugar" probably means wine served alongside or poured over, with powdered sugar dusted on top; a sweet wine such as sherry or Madeira would suit. Yield depends on spoon size, but the batter is a large one.
Bread fritters belong to a long tradition of using up stale loaf in sweet dishes, alongside bread pudding and poor knights of Windsor. The technique of scalding crumbs with hot milk to make a panada is old and versatile, showing up in forcemeats and quenelles as well as puddings, and here it supplies structure that would otherwise need a good deal of flour. The Zante currant, dried from a small seedless grape and named for the Ionian island that shipped it, was among the cheapest dried fruits of the period and appears constantly in nineteenth-century sweet cookery. The brandy and the closing instruction to serve with wine and sugar suggest a dish for a company table rather than a family breakfast, and the recipe is explicit that the fritters go to table hot.