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Cream Fritters
Put one teacupful of flour into a basin with an equal quantity of pounded macaroons, a few dried orange flowers that have been browned in sugar, two ounces of finely-shredded candied lemon peel, and one or two small lumps of sugar. Beat the yolks of nine or ten eggs, mix them with one-half pint of milk and one-half pint of cream, and stir in gradually with the other ingredients, then add the beaten whites of three eggs. Turn the mixture into a saucepan, and stir it over the fire until it is thick and boiling. Pour it into a well-floured dish, dredge flour over it, and leave it until cold. Cut the paste into small pieces, roll them out round, place them in a fryingpan with some hot butter, and fry until lightly browned. Drain the fritters, arrange them on a hot dish over which has been spread a folded napkin, and sprinkle over caster sugar. Serve while hot.
This is a set custard-panade — what Italians call crema fritta — cooked stiff, chilled solid, then cut and fried. The hinge is the cooking of the paste: it must actually come to a boil so the flour cooks out and the mixture sets firm enough to cut, and it must be stirred hard the whole time or the yolks will scramble.
- TeacupfulIn this period a teacup is usually reckoned at about 5 to 6 fl oz, so figure roughly three-quarters of a cup of flour and the same volume of crushed macaroons.
- MacaroonsThese are crisp almond macaroons of the amaretti type, not the coconut drop or the French macaron. Dry, brittle cookies that pound to a coarse meal are what the recipe wants; a soft cookie will make the paste slack.
- Dried orange flowers browned in sugarCandied orange blossoms, once a standard confectioner's item and now nearly impossible to buy. A teaspoon of orange flower water stirred into the milk gives the same perfume, though not the texture.
- Lumps of sugarA lump is a cube, roughly a teaspoon. One or two is a token amount — this paste is barely sweetened, and the sweetness comes from the macaroons and the sugar dusted on at the end.
- Cooking the pasteWhisk constantly over medium heat and expect it to thicken suddenly and lump before it smooths out. Let it bubble a minute or two once thick; undercooked flour tastes raw and the paste will not firm up.
- CoolingSpread it no more than about three-quarters of an inch deep and give it at least four hours, or overnight, in the refrigerator. Warm paste will collapse in the pan.
- "Roll them out round"Cut rounds with a floured cutter rather than trying to roll set custard. A light coating of flour, or flour then egg and fine crumbs, holds the surface together in the fat.
- Frying in butterWhole butter at frying heat will brown and burn before the fritters color. Use clarified butter, or a butter and neutral oil mixture, at about 350F, and fry in batches.
- Caster sugarSuperfine sugar. Granulated whizzed briefly in a grinder does the job; confectioners' sugar dissolves too fast on a hot, slightly greasy surface.
- YieldThe quantities here -- a pint of dairy and nine or ten yolks -- should give something on the order of two to three dozen small fritters, depending how large they are cut.
Fried cream is one of the older sweet fritters in the European repertoire: a stiff flour-thickened custard, chilled, cut and fried, known in Italy as crema fritta and in French kitchens as beignets de crème. It belongs to the same family as the savory croquette, and part of its appeal in a pre-refrigeration kitchen was practical as much as culinary -- a rich custard could be made ahead, held cold as a firm paste, and finished to order in minutes. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, put his name to a cook book in 1896 drawing on the classical French repertoire the hotel's kitchens worked in, and the details here -- candied orange flowers, pounded macaroons, shredded candied lemon peel -- are the marks of nineteenth-century confectionery, when a pastry cook's storeroom held sugared flowers and candied peel as ordinary stock. The folded napkin under the fritters is a service convention of the era.