Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Rhubarb Fritters
Rhubarb Fritters
Cut some sticks of young rhubarb into pieces about an inch long, and boil them in water for ten minutes; then drain and place them in cold water. When quite cold, drain the pieces of rhubarb, lay them on a dish, strew finely-crushed sugar over, moisten with a few tablespoonfuls of brandy, and let them marinade for a couple of hours. Dip the pieces of rhubarb in some frying-batter, put them in boiling lard, and fry to a nice color. Drain on paper for a minute or two to absorb the fat, place them neatly on a dish that has been spread over with a folded napkin or a fancy paper, and serve.
A straightforward fruit fritter, but the original leans on knowledge assumed of a Waldorf cook: the batter is not given, and the blanching time will overcook slender spring rhubarb.
- The hinge: dry the piecesRhubarb holds a great deal of water, and after boiling, cooling and two hours in sugar and brandy it will be wet. Blot each piece well on a towel before it goes into the batter, or the coating slides off in the fat.
- Blanching timeTen minutes will reduce young forced rhubarb to threads. Two to three minutes at a bare simmer is enough to set the pieces; test with a knife tip and pull them while they still hold their shape.
- Frying-batterOscar assumes a standard kitchen batter and gives none here. A plain one of about 1 cup flour, 1 egg, a pinch of salt and enough milk or beer to make it the consistency of heavy cream will coat the pieces properly.
- Finely-crushed sugarThis is caster or superfine sugar, which dissolves quickly against the fruit. Granulated works but sits in grains; a few seconds in a food processor gets you there.
- Boiling lardLard was a common frying medium of the period and gives a clean, crisp result. The book gives no temperature; about 350-365F answers to it, since "boiling" here almost certainly means hot enough to shimmer and to brown a crumb briskly rather than actually at a boil. Any neutral oil substitutes.
- Leaves and rootsUse the stalks only. Rhubarb leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and are not eaten; trim them off and discard.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; roughly a pound of trimmed rhubarb would serve about four. The folded napkin or fancy paper is a service convention (the fat has already been blotted off on paper); serve at once, dusted with more sugar, with cream or a sabayon if you want a sauce.
Rhubarb reached the Anglo-American table late and by an odd route: it was grown in Europe for centuries as a medicinal root before the stalks were treated as fruit, a shift generally traced to English kitchens of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the 1890s forced rhubarb was among the first sweet things available in spring, which is why it turns up in hotel dessert lists ahead of the summer berries. The treatment here follows French pastry-kitchen practice as it was carried into American grand hotels: blanch, shock in cold water, macerate in sugar and spirit, batter, fry, and send it out on a folded napkin. Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms rather than its ranges, and his 1896 book records the house repertoire of a kitchen organised on French brigade lines.