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Fritter Batter
1½ cups flour
1 egg
¼ teaspoon salt
⅔ cup milk
2 teaspoons baking-powder
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
(for sweet fritters only)
Sift dry ingredients, add egg, well beaten, and milk. The batter should be thick enough to completely coat the article it is intended to cover. If too thin, add more flour. If too thick, add more liquid.
A plain all-purpose coating batter, leavened with baking powder rather than beaten egg white or yeast. The proportions are sound; what the original leaves out is the frying itself.
- Consistency is the whole recipeThe batter should cling to a dipped piece of food in an even, opaque layer that does not run off. Lift the food out and count to three: if bare patches appear, whisk in flour a tablespoon at a time; if the coating sits in a heavy blanket, thin with milk.
- Frying temperatureThe book assumes you know your fat. Aim for 365-375F. Below that the batter absorbs grease before the leavening sets; much above it and the crust browns before the interior of the fritter heats through.
- Rest, or don'tBecause the lift here comes from baking powder rather than gluten relaxation, this batter works best used within about 15 minutes of mixing. A long rest lets the chemical leavening spend itself in the bowl.
- Powdered sugarIn this period 'powdered sugar' generally meant sugar ground finer than granulated rather than today's cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar. Either will work; granulated is a serviceable substitute.
- Baking-powder strengthTwo teaspoons to 1½ cups flour is at the generous end of the usual modern ratio, so no adjustment is needed. Many powders of the period acted largely on wetting, which is a further reason to use the batter promptly.
- YieldEnough to coat a moderate quantity of prepared food — apple rings, corn kernels, cooked meat or fish from the day before, which is why it sits in the made-over dishes chapter.
- Dry the food firstNot stated but assumed: pat fruit, vegetables or cooked meat dry and dust lightly with flour before dipping. Wet surfaces make the batter slide off in the fat.
Fritter batter is one of the small workhorse formulas that hold an old cookbook together — a single page referred back to from elsewhere in the book, for apple fritters, corn fritters, and the salvaged remains of yesterday's chicken or salmon. Its placement in "Entrées and Made-Over Dishes" is the telling detail: in a household without reliable refrigeration, leftovers had to be used quickly, and a coating of batter and a kettle of hot fat turned cold scraps into something that could be sent to table as a course in its own right. The chemically leavened version seen here belongs to the era after baking powder became a cheap grocery staple in the later nineteenth century; earlier English and American receipts for the same purpose leaned on stiffly beaten egg whites, ale, or a yeast sponge for lightness. Butterick, a pattern company publishing for the practical housekeeper, had every reason to print the shortest and most adaptable version.