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Vanities
Beat two eggs, stir in a pinch of salt and a half tea-spoon rose-water, add sifted flour till just thick enough to roll out, cut with a cake-cutter, and fry quickly in hot lard. Sift powdered sugar on them while hot, and when cool put a tea-spoon of jelly in the center of each one. Nice for tea or dessert.-Mrs. D. C. Harrington,
A fried egg-dough pastry rather than anything cooked on a griddle, despite the section it sits in. The whole trick is very thin dough and fat hot enough to puff it before it can soak.
- Flour is unmeasured on purposeTwo eggs will take somewhere in the region of 1 to 1 1/2 cups of flour before the dough is stiff enough to roll, depending on the eggs and the flour. Add it in small amounts and stop while the dough is still soft and slightly tacky; a dry dough fries into hard biscuits rather than blistered puffs.
- Roll thinner than feels rightAbout 1/8 inch, or thinner. These have no leavening at all, so all the lift comes from steam and the egg, and a thick round will stay dense in the middle.
- "Fry quickly in hot lard"The book gives no temperature. In modern terms somewhere around 360-375F suits it, with well under a minute a side for such thin rounds. Fat that is too cool lets the dough drink grease; too hot and it colors before the inside sets. Lard is authentic and fries clean, but any neutral fat with a high smoke point works.
- Depth of fatUse at least 1 1/2 inches so the rounds float and puff freely. A heavy pot and a thermometer are worth more here than any other equipment.
- Rose-waterStill sold, usually as culinary or food-grade rose water in Middle Eastern and South Asian groceries. Half a teaspoon is a whisper; modern rose waters vary a great deal in strength, so taste before committing. Vanilla or lemon zest is a reasonable substitute if rose reads as perfumed to you.
- Powdered sugar while hotThis matters. Sugar sifted onto hot pastry clings; on cool pastry it slides off. Drain the rounds a moment on paper, then dust.
- The jelly goes on lastWait until they are fully cool or the jelly will slump and the sugar will dissolve into a wet patch. A firm-set currant, quince or crab apple jelly holds its shape best.
- Yield and keepingTwo eggs give about 18 to 24 two-inch rounds. They are at their best within a few hours; by the next day they have gone leathery, and reheating does not bring them back.
"Vanities" is an old American name for a fried, unleavened egg pastry that puffs up hollow in the fat. Related versions turn up in nineteenth-century cookbooks under names like vanity cakes, nothings, and crullers, and the same idea underlies the fried festival pastries of much of Europe. Its appearance in a nineteenth-century collection, credited to a contributor by name, reflects how such collections were assembled: household cooks submitted what they actually made, which is why the flour is left to the cook's judgment and the instructions assume she has fried dough before. The rose-water is the period detail worth noting. Before commercial vanilla extract became cheap and ubiquitous in American kitchens, rose water and orange-flower water were common aromatics for sweet baking, carried over from English practice, and they persisted for some time in Southern receipt books.