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Strawberry Fritters
Mix one tablespoonful of salad oil with the grated peel of half a lemon and a little flour; when smooth add the whites of three well-whisked eggs and a little white wine. The mixture should be of the consistency of thick cream. Pick the tops off some large, ripe strawberries, and put the fruit in the prepared batter. Put a lump of butter into a deep fryingpan, and when it is boiling drop the batter, with the strawberries, from a tablespoon into the fat. When nicely cooked remove the fritters carefully, drain them on a sieve or a colander, then arrange on a hot dish; sift some powdered sugar over, and serve.
A fritter batter built on stiff egg whites rather than a leavener, which makes the timing between mixing and frying the whole game. Oscar gives no quantity for the flour, so the "thick cream" description is the only real measure you have.
- The flour is unmeasured"a little flour" against three egg whites is genuinely ambiguous. Work toward the stated consistency of thick cream — a batter that coats a berry and clings without running off — adding flour a spoonful at a time and judging by the coating rather than by any fixed quantity.
- Fold, then fry at onceNothing here leavens the batter but air beaten into the whites. Fold them in last, with a light hand, and get the fritters into the fat immediately; a batter left standing ten minutes will slump and fry heavy.
- Butter will not hold upButter alone is awkward -- butter browns and can burn at frying heat, and "when it is boiling" most likely describes its water cooking off rather than any measured temperature. Clarified butter or a neutral oil handles the job more reliably; a fat temperature around 350–360F is hot enough to set the crust before the berries collapse.
- Dry the strawberriesHulled berries weep, and wet fruit makes the batter slide off and the fat spit. Pat them thoroughly dry, and hull them shallowly so the fruit stays intact rather than opening into the batter.
- Ripe but firmVery soft berries turn to seedy juice inside the shell. Choose fruit that is fully coloured but still firm to the finger, and use large berries so the ratio of fruit to batter stays worth eating.
- The white wine"a little" is left unquantified; its job is to thin the batter and lighten the crust. A dry wine is what is wanted; anything sweet is likelier to darken the exterior before the inside cooks.
- Drain on a rackA sieve or colander works, as written, but a wire rack over a tray keeps the undersides from steaming. Sugar them the moment they come out of the fat, while the surface will still take it.
- YieldOscar gives no quantity of berries, so any count is guesswork; three egg whites' worth of batter makes a modest dessert course. They do not keep; fry in batches and send them out hot.
Fruit fried in a wine-and-egg-white batter is an old European dessert idea, and by the time Oscar Tschirky was assembling this book in the 1890s the fritter had a long run in hotel and restaurant kitchens as a way to make a warm dessert quickly from whatever fruit was in the larder: banana, peach, orange, and in season strawberry. What dates the recipe is the strawberries themselves: ripe berries were still largely a seasonal luxury, and turning them out hot in batter with powdered sugar was a way of putting a seasonal item on a menu with some ceremony. The batter, leavened only with whipped whites and slackened with white wine, belongs to the same French-influenced technique that runs through the rest of the Waldorf kitchen's work.