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Indian Meal Fritters (Having beaten eight eggs very)
987. Having beaten eight eggs very light, stir them gradually into a quart of rich milk, in turn with twelve large table-spoonfuls of yellow Indian meal, adding a salt-spoon of salt. When all is in, stir the whole very hard. Have ready over a clear fire, in a pot or a large frying-pan, a pound of fresh lard, boiling fast; drop the batter into it, a ladleful at a time. If you find the batter too thin, stir into it a little more Indian meal. As the lard boils away, replenish it with more. As fast as they are done, take out each fritter with a perforated skimmer; through the holes of which let the lard drip back into the pot.
The fritters must all be well drained. Send them to table hot, and eat them with wine and sugar, or with molasses. In cooking these fritters, you may drop in three or four, one immediately after another ; they will not run if the lard is boiling fast, and the batter thick enough, and made with the proper number of eggs.
A plain deep-fried cornmeal batter, thickened only with eggs. The batter is stiffer than a pancake batter and needs fat hot enough to set it on contact.
- Indian mealYellow cornmeal; the recipe specifies yellow. Grind is not stated, and modern cornmeals behave differently enough that you should expect to use the extra meal the recipe allows for.
- QuantitiesA quart is 4 cups of milk to about 3/4 cup plus a little of cornmeal by the twelve tablespoons, plus eight eggs. That is a very loose batter by modern standards; plan on adding cornmeal until it drops thickly from the ladle rather than runs.
- Salt-spoonA salt-spoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon.
- The frying fatA pound of lard is about 2 cups; the recipe expects you to top it up as it boils away. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works. Hold it at 360-375F and let it recover between batches.
- Why the fat must be hotThe hinge of the recipe is stated plainly: the fritters "will not run if the lard is boiling fast." In cooler fat the egg-and-milk batter disperses before it sets and you get shreds instead of fritters. Test with one ladleful first.
- Ladle sizeA ladleful could be sizeable. Use about 2 tablespoons per fritter and fry three or four at a time, turning once; two to three minutes total gives a set centre.
- DrainingThe perforated skimmer is a slotted spoon. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the undersides do not steam soft, and hold uncovered in a low oven while you fry the rest.
- Yield and servingServing -- "Wine and sugar" most likely means a sweet wine poured over with sugar sifted on top; molasses is the plainer option.
"Indian meal" was the standard British and American term for maize meal, distinguishing it from the wheat, oat and barley meals of the older European kitchen, and it carried that name in cookery books over a long period. Deep-fried batter fritters of this kind were everyday cooking wherever there was a pot and a supply of rendered pork fat, and cornmeal made them cheaper than a wheat-flour batter.