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Alabama Rice Fritters
Four eggs beaten very light, one pint milk, one cup boiled rice, three tea-spoons baking-powder in one quart flour; make into a batter; drop by spoonfuls into boiling lard. Sauce: One pound of sugar, one and a half cups water, stick of cinnamon; boil until clear.-"Ruth Royal," Atlanta, Ga.
A leftover-rice fritter with a cinnamon syrup, written in the volume measures of a nineteenth-century kitchen. Two things need attention: the flour quantity, which produces a very stiff batter as written, and the frying temperature, which the original leaves to judgment.
- The hinge: batter consistencyA quart of flour (about 4 cups, 500 g) against a pint of milk and four eggs gives something closer to a soft dough than a drop batter. Add milk until the mixture falls thickly from a spoon but does not pour; the rice absorbs liquid as it stands, so check again just before frying.
- "Boiling lard"Lard does not boil at frying temperature; the phrase simply means fat hot enough to sizzle. Use 2-3 inches at 350-365F. Below that the fritters soak; above it the outside colors before the center of the rice-heavy batter sets.
- Fat substitutionLard fries these well and is still sold, but any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. Lard gives a slightly shorter, more tender crust.
- The riceOne cup of cooked rice, cooled and separated with a fork. Freshly boiled hot rice will lump and thin the batter with steam; leftover cooked rice suits the method best, though the recipe says only 'boiled rice'.
- Baking powder of the periodThree teaspoons to a quart of flour is on the light side by modern standards, where a teaspoon per cup is usual. Period powders were generally single-acting and behaved differently from modern double-acting powder, so the original ratio should be left as it stands; do not increase it.
- The sauceOne pound of granulated sugar is about 2¼ cups. With 1½ cups water and a cinnamon stick this is a thin syrup, not a caramel. 'Boil until clear' means until the sugar has fully dissolved and the liquid runs bright, roughly 5-8 minutes; boiling much beyond that will reduce it toward a candy-thick syrup.
- Yield and servingThe quantities make a large batch, several dozen small fritters, enough for a full table. Drain on paper, serve hot, and pour the warm syrup over at the table rather than in advance.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the wave of regional American compilations assembled from named contributors' household receipts, and the signature here, "Ruth Royal" of Atlanta, is typical of the form: the recipe carries a person's name and her city as its credential. Rice fritters made from the previous day's cooked rice were a standing feature of Southern breakfast tables, where rice was a staple of the Carolina low country long before it was common further north; the same thrift produced the yeast-raised calas sold on New Orleans streets, which are generally treated as a Creole cousin of this batter-and-baking-powder version. The cinnamon syrup poured over them is in keeping with the sweetened breakfast cakes of the period.