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Cream Fritters
One and a half pints flour, one pint milk, six well-beaten eggs, one-half nutmeg, two tea-spoons salt, one pint cream; stir the whole enough to mix the cream; fry in small cakes. - Mrs. M. K. P.
A plain egg batter with no leavening at all — the lift comes entirely from six eggs and the cream, so the batter must be mixed lightly and cooked promptly.
- The measurements in cupsOne and a half pints of flour is 3 cups (about 13 oz); one pint of milk is 2 cups, as is the pint of cream. The result is a thin pouring batter, closer to a crepe batter than a drop batter.
- Cut the saltTwo teaspoons is a little above modern practice for three cups of flour, though not by much; one to one and a half teaspoons is nearer what a modern palate expects.
- Half a nutmegGrated, that is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons — assertive but characteristic of the period. A rounded teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg gives much the same effect.
- "Stir the whole enough to mix the cream"This is the hinge: mix only until combined. With no baking powder or soda, overworked batter turns tough and flat, and the eggs are doing all the work.
- "Fry in small cakes"Ambiguous in the original: no fat, depth or heat is specified. Given the loose batter, these are most likely spoonfuls dropped into hot fat and cooked a few minutes a side; they can also be handled as thick griddle cakes in a buttered pan.
- Cream then and nowDairy cream in the 1880s was unhomogenized and unstandardized, so its richness varied from household to household. Heavy or whipping cream is the closest substitute; half-and-half will give a slacker, more custard-like fritter.
- Yield and servingThe batter is a large one, running to some eight cups, and will make several dozen small fritters. It is unsweetened, so sugar, syrup, preserves or a sweet sauce would be the natural accompaniment.
The Dixie Cook-Book belongs to the great wave of late 19th-century American compilations built from contributed receipts, which is why this one carries only a set of initials — Mrs. M. K. P. — rather than a full name. Fritters of this kind, an egg-rich batter fried in small cakes and eaten with sugar or syrup, run through English and American cookery from the 18th century onward, and the word itself reaches English through Middle English friture and Old French, from Late Latin frictura, a frying. The generous pint of cream suggests a farm or well-supplied household: cream was the ingredient you had in quantity if you kept a cow and skimmed your own milk.