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Apple Fritters
Make a batter in proportion of one cup sweet milk to two cups flour, a heaping tea-spoon baking powder, two eggs beaten separately, one table-spoon sugar, and salt-spoon salt; heat the milk a little more than milk-warm, add slowly to the beaten yolks and sugar, then add flour and whites of eggs; stir all together, and throw in thin slices of good sour apples, dipping the batter up over them; drop in boiling lard in large spoonfuls with piece of. apple in each, and fry to a light brown. Serve with maple syrup or a nice syrup made of sugar.—Mrs. James Henderson.
A straightforward drop fritter: a leavened batter, tart apple slices, and deep fat. The only fussy step is the warmed milk, which needs a light hand.
- The hinge: tempering the yolksThe milk is heated "a little more than milk-warm" — roughly 100-110F, warm to a fingertip and no hotter. Add it slowly to the beaten yolks and sugar while whisking; poured in hot or fast it will set the yolks into threads.
- Salt-spoonA salt-spoon is about a quarter teaspoon. The tablespoon of sugar sweetens the batter only lightly, which is correct here since syrup follows at the table.
- Baking powder timingMany baking powders of the period were single-acting, losing much of their lift once the batter was wet. Modern double-acting powder gives a second lift in the fat, so mix the batter and fry promptly rather than letting it stand.
- Sour applesThis means tart cooking apples — Granny Smith, Bramley, Northern Spy, Winesap. A sweet eating apple goes flabby and cloying under syrup. Slice thin, about an eighth of an inch, so the apple cooks through in the time the batter takes to brown.
- "Boiling lard"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around what is dropped in — by modern deep-frying practice somewhere around 360-375F. Much below that the fritters soak; much above it the batter browns before the apple softens. Lard is still ideal, but any neutral fat with a high smoke point works.
- Folding the whitesThe whites are beaten separately for lift and should go in last, folded rather than stirred, even though the original says "stir all together." Overworking them costs the fritters their lightness.
- YieldOne cup of milk to two of flour makes a substantial batch of large spoonfuls — enough for several at breakfast. Fry in small batches so the fat temperature holds, and drain on paper before saucing.
Fritters of this kind sit at the point where a pancake batter meets deep fat, and they were common on American breakfast and tea tables through the nineteenth century. The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) prints recipes under contributors' names — hence "Mrs. James Henderson," identified by her husband's name as was conventional then. The instruction to beat the eggs separately belongs to a period when cooks still relied heavily on beaten whites for lift; chemical baking powder had been commercially available since the 1850s and 60s, and here the two methods are simply used together, belt and braces.