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Almond Custard Fritters
Beat up five eggs to each pound of flour and pour in by degrees some new milk, taking care to keep the mixture smooth. Stir this over a gentle stove for twenty minutes or so, until the custard is sufficiently thickened, when add a mixture of a quarter of a pound of sugar, one ounce of blanched and well-pounded almonds, six yolks of eggs, and a pinch or so of salt. This will then form a thick custard, which may be spread on a slightly buttered baking-sheet, and when cold it may be cut into pieces about two inches by one and a quarter inches. Dip these pieces in egg and breadcrumbs and fry in very hot fat until slightly colored, then drain by skimmer, dust with powdered sugar, and serve piled up on a folded napkin or dish-paper.
This is fried pastry cream — a stiff flour-thickened custard set firm, cut, breaded and deep-fried. Two things in the original need attention: the milk quantity is never stated, and the batch size is enormous.
- Scale it downA pound of flour with five whole eggs and six extra yolks makes a very large batch, enough to sheet out over a large tray and yield many dozen fritters at the two-by-one-and-a-quarter-inch size given. A quarter of that quantity — about 4 oz (115 g) flour, 1 large egg plus 2 yolks, 1 oz sugar, a scant 1/4 oz ground almonds — makes roughly 16 to 18 pieces, enough for six.
- The missing milk"Some new milk" is left to the cook's judgement, and no quantity can be recovered from the text. Add the milk gradually and stop when the texture is right rather than when a measure is empty; the target is a paste thick enough that a spoon stands in it, not a pourable custard.
- New milkFresh whole milk, unskimmed and unsoured. Ordinary whole milk is the direct substitute; the small fat content matters to the set and the flavour.
- Cook the flour outThe twenty minutes over a gentle stove is not padding. Flour-thickened custard tastes pasty until the starch has cooked through, and this is the batch's only chance. Stir constantly and keep the heat low, or the bottom scorches and the whole pan tastes of it.
- The yolks go in off the heatAdding six yolks to a boiling-hot paste will scramble them. Pull the pan from the heat, beat the sugar, almonds, yolks and salt in quickly, then return it to low heat for two or three minutes, stirring, to set the yolks without curdling.
- Pounded almondsBlanched and well-pounded means skinned almonds ground to a fine meal — commercial almond flour is exactly this. An ounce to a pound of flour is a background note, not a dominant flavour; use blanched, not natural, or you get brown flecks.
- Spread thin and chill hardSpread the custard about 1/2 to 3/4 inch deep and level it, then cover the surface with buttered paper or plastic to stop a skin forming. "When cold" means thoroughly cold — three hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Warm custard collapses in the fryer.
- Frying temperatureIn modern terms, take "very hot fat" as roughly 360-375F. Cooler and the breadcrumbs absorb grease before they colour; hotter and the crust darkens while the centre is still cold. Fry in small batches, a minute or so a side, and drain on a rack rather than the napkin, which is for the table.
- ServingThey must go out hot — the interior is meant to be soft and just short of molten, and it firms up as it cools. Dust with confectioners' sugar at the last moment.
Fried custard is one of the older sweet-course tricks in European cookery, appearing as crema fritta in northern Italy and crème frite in France, and it turns up in English books as "fried cream" well before Oscar's day. The method here depends on a flour-set custard rather than an egg-set one, the starch giving a block firm enough to cut, bread and drop into fat, though egg-set and rice-flour versions of fried cream exist too. Its presence in the Waldorf's kitchen section is suggestive of how a large hotel might work: one can imagine the custard cooked in bulk, sheeted, chilled and cut, leaving only a short fry between an order and a hot plate, though the book does not record the brigade's practice. Oscar Tschirky, who was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel rather than its chef, assembled his 1896 volume largely from the house's working repertoire, which is why so many entries read like a professional's note to himself and leave quantities such as the milk here to be judged by eye.