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Fritters Bonne Femme
Put into a saucepan over the fire one ounce of butter to melt and mix in with it two ounces of sifted crushed loaf sugar, the grated rind of a lemon and a tumberful of water. When the liquor boils, sift in sufficient potato flour to make a stiff paste, and stir well until the mixture adheres to the saucepan. Turn the preparation into a basin, let it cool, but not get cold, and add the yolks of six eggs, singly, beating each one in for about four minutes before another is added. When all the yolks are worked in, spread the mixture on a dish, keeping it about one inch in thickness, and let it get cold. Take it up in small lumps about the size of walnuts, drop them into a fryingpan of boiling lard, and shake the pan well until the fritters are swollen and of a golden color. Take them out, drain, put them on a napkin, dust over with fine sugar, and serve.
This is a cooked paste in the choux family, thickened with potato starch instead of wheat, then enriched with yolks and fried in spoon-sized lumps. The hinge is the fat temperature: too hot and the outsides set before the fritters can swell.
- A tumblerfulA drinking tumbler of the period held roughly 8 fl oz, so read this as 1 cup of water. Because the flour is added "sufficient" to make a stiff paste, small variation here does no harm.
- Crushed loaf sugarLoaf sugar came as a hard cone that was broken and crushed at home. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent; 2 ounces is about 1/4 cup. The "fine sugar" for dusting at the end means a finely powdered sugar -- caster or confectioners' will both serve.
- Potato flourThis means what is now sold as potato starch, not the heavier modern potato flour made from whole dried potato. Starch gelatinises fast and sets firm, which is why the paste can be spread and cut cold rather than piped warm.
- Working in the yolksFour minutes per yolk is generous but the intent is sound: the paste must be barely warm, and each yolk fully absorbed before the next, or the mixture breaks and the fritters will not puff. A stand mixer with the paddle does this in well under a minute per yolk.
- Do not let it get cold before the yolksCool to about body temperature. Hot paste scrambles the yolks; cold paste will not take them up smoothly.
- "Boiling lard"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fully heated frying fat, around 350-360F. Any neutral frying fat works, though lard gives the crisper shell the recipe expects. Shaking the pan keeps the fritters turning so they swell evenly and cook through before the outside darkens.
- Size and donenessWalnut-sized lumps swell considerably as they fry. They are done when uniformly deep golden and light in the hand; a pale interior streak means they came out early and will collapse.
- Yield and servingThe batch runs to a couple of dozen small fritters, give or take, depending how large the lumps are taken up. They are at their best within minutes of draining, dusted with sugar; they deflate and toughen as they sit.
Bonne femme, "good wife," is French kitchen shorthand for something plain and homely, and it was applied loosely in the late nineteenth century to dishes made without garnish or elaborate sauce. This is essentially a soufflé fritter of the pâte à choux family, the same cooked paste that gives beignets soufflés and, savory and potato-bound, pommes dauphine; potato starch in place of wheat flour gives a lighter, shorter texture. Its presence in a Waldorf collection reflects how thoroughly French pastry vocabulary had reached American hotel kitchens by 1896 - Oscar Tschirky was a Swiss-born maître d'hôtel rather than a chef, and fried sweet fritters were a staple of the lighter end of a long dinner menu.