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Apricot Fritters
Use a quarter of a pound of butter to each full pound of brioche paste and set it for three hours to rise; then lay the paste on a slab, fold it over and roll out thick; fold again and place in a basin on ice. When quite firm roll it to an eighth of an inch thick and stamp out rounds with a cutter two inches in diameter; moisten the top edges of the rounds with a brush dipped in water and put a little apricot jam into the center of each; cover this with a second round of paste and press the two together, taking care to have the edges stick closely. Prick with a skewer points on top one-sixth of an inch from the edge and fry the fritters in warm fat; drain and sprinkle fine sugar over them. Pile on a dish, and serve with ornamental sugar piping.
This is a laminated brioche turnover, fried rather than baked — closer to a beignet or a Polish pączek than to a batter fritter. The critical point is the seal: jam that escapes into the fat will burn and can spit violently.
- "Warm fat" means 350–360°F"Warm fat" is left unquantified in the original; for enriched, sugared dough a modern cook would work at roughly 350-360F. Much hotter and the outside colours before the centre of the seam cooks through; much cooler and the fritters absorb fat and go heavy. A thermometer is worth more here than any visual cue.
- Brioche paste, and the extra butterThe recipe assumes you already have brioche dough on hand. Any standard brioche will do. The additional 4 oz butter per pound of dough is rolled in as for puff pastry, giving flaky layers on top of the yeast rise.
- The three-hour riseThat is a proof at old-fashioned kitchen temperature, probably cooler than a modern kitchen. In a 72F room with commercial yeast, expect the dough roughly doubled in 90 minutes to two hours. Judge by volume, not the clock.
- Chill hard between turns"Place in a basin on ice" is the whole technique. The butter must be firm but not brittle before each roll, or it tears through the dough and the layers merge. Thirty minutes in the refrigerator per turn is the modern equivalent.
- An eighth of an inch, and no thickerTwo rounds pressed together make a quarter-inch of dough that will swell considerably in the fat. Rolling thicker gives a doughy centre.
- SealingWater alone is a weak glue on buttery dough. Use a scant teaspoon of jam, keep a clear half-inch border, press the edges firmly with fingertips rather than a fork, and chill the assembled fritters before frying so the seam sets.
- PrickingThe skewer holes near the rim most likely let steam escape so the seal is not blown open. Prick the top layer only -- piercing through to the jam defeats the purpose.
- "Fine sugar" and the pipingFine sugar here is caster or superfine, dusted while the fritters are still hot. The "ornamental sugar piping" is a plating convention of the period rather than a flavour element -- piped icing or sugar work over the pile; a snowfall of confectioners' sugar is the usual modern substitute.
Fritters of this kind belong to the elaborate hot-sweet course of the late nineteenth-century hotel menu, where an entremets arrived between the roast and the ices and was expected to look built rather than merely cooked. Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, and his 1896 Cook Book reads throughout as a working record of a French-trained brigade — the vocabulary here (paste, slab, stamp out, pile on a dish) is kitchen shorthand, assuming a pastry cook who already keeps brioche dough going. Apricot jam was the standard filling for a reason beyond taste: it is stiff, low in free water and holds its shape in hot fat where a looser preserve would boil out. The final flourish of piped sugar is pure period service, the same instinct that put spun-sugar cages and paper frills on everything else leaving that kitchen.