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Trifles
A quart flour, a cup sugar, two table-spoons melted butter, a little salt, two tea-spoons baking powder, one egg, and sweet milk sufficient to make rather stiff; roll out in thin sheets, cut in pieces about two by four inches; make as many cuts across the short way as possible, inserting the knife near one edge and ending the cut just before reaching the other. Pass two knitting-needles under every other strip, spread the needles as far apart as possible, and with them hold the trifles in the fat until a light brown. Only one can be fried at a time. - Miss Ettie Dalbey, Harrisburg.
A stiff sweet dough, slashed into a lattice and stretched over two needles as it fries, so it sets in an open woven shape. The stretching is the whole point of the dish; everything else is plain fried dough.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume, so a quart is 4 cups. Period sources generally reckoned that at roughly a pound, and modern cups will land somewhere between about 16 and 18 oz depending on how the flour is scooped. Hold back the last half cup until you see how the dough comes together.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk that appears elsewhere in these books. Whole milk is the closest match. Expect to need about 3/4 to 1 cup for a dough stiff enough to roll thin without tearing.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons in 4 cups of flour is a light hand by modern standards. That suits the dish: too much lift and the strips puff shut instead of staying open and lacy.
- Fat temperatureThe original gives none. Fry at 365-375F. Below that the strips soak; above it they brown before the interior sets, and these pieces are cooked through in well under two minutes.
- The needlesKnitting needles were a common household item, familiar enough that the recipe can call for them without explanation. Two metal skewers or thin wooden dowels do the same job. Thread them under alternate strips, lower the piece into the fat, then spread the skewers to open the lattice while the dough is still soft.
- Rolling thinThin means thin: about 1/8 inch. Thicker dough will not stretch, and the slashed strips will fuse back together in the fat.
- One at a timeThis is not a caution about crowding the pan but about your hands. Each piece needs both skewers and constant attention for the whole of its short fry, so the batch takes a while. The recipe stops at 'a light brown' and says nothing about finishing; drain on paper if you wish.
- YieldA quart of flour makes a great deal of dough. Cut in two-by-four-inch pieces you will get several dozen trifles, likely more than four; halving the recipe is more reasonable for a household.
Despite the name, these are nothing to do with the English trifle of sponge, custard and sherry. This is fried lattice dough of a kind associated with Pennsylvania German cookery, and the contributor gives a Harrisburg address. The trick of holding the dough open on knitting needles turns up in other nineteenth-century American collections, though where it originated is not documented. Compiled cookbooks of this period routinely gathered contributions by name and town from well outside the region named on the title page.