Fried Apples
Slice some apples, dip them in a batter made of one egg, sugar, milk and flour enough to thicken; fry a golden brown, sprinkle with lemon juice and serve very hot.
A fritter in all but name, given here in the loose shorthand of 1911 — no quantities beyond the single egg. The proportions are yours to set, so build the batter to a coating consistency rather than looking for a fixed recipe.
- The batter, in real amountsOne egg, about 1/2 cup milk, roughly 3/4 cup flour and a tablespoon of sugar will give a batter that coats an apple slice without sliding off; add flour a spoonful at a time to reach it. It should ribbon thickly from the spoon; too thin and it fries into lace, too thick and the centre stays raw.
- Cut rings, not wedgesCore the apples whole and cut crosswise into rings about 1/4 inch thick. Wedges are thicker at one edge and cook unevenly. The recipe says only "slice", so the choice is yours.
- Choose a firm appleA tart, dense variety holds its shape — Granny Smith, Braeburn, Northern Spy. Softer eating apples collapse into sauce inside the crust before the batter colours.
- Fat and temperatureThe recipe does not say whether to use a shallow pan or deep fat; either will work. Aim for 350-365F; below that the batter drinks oil, above it the crust browns before the apple softens. Two to three minutes a side in a shallow pan, or a few minutes turning once in deep fat.
- Dry the slices firstBlot the cut rings on a towel before dipping. Wet apple sheds batter in the pan and spits in the fat.
- Lemon juice at the tableThe lemon goes on after frying, not before, and it cuts the sweetness of a fried, sugared batter much as a dusting of sugar and cinnamon would. Add a spoonful of sugar with it if the apples are very tart.
- Yield and servingTwo medium apples and this quantity of batter make roughly 16 rings, enough for four. They soften within minutes of leaving the fat, so fry in batches and serve as the book says, very hot.
Battered and fried fruit is one of the oldest sweet preparations in English cookery — medieval and early modern books give "fritters" of apple, and by the eighteenth century apple fritters were a standard fixture of the fried-batter family alongside fried bread and fried cream. What dates this version is its brevity: the Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from a pattern and magazine publisher, and quantities are given only sparingly. Apples were an obvious fruit for such a dish in an American household, being among the crops that kept in the cellar from autumn through to spring, and a dish like this made good use of fruit that had begun to lose its crispness for eating out of hand.