No. 3044

Mundane Fritters

Beignets Mondains

Prepare a cream cake paste, the same as for souffle fritters a la Medicis (No. 3047). Cut some bands of paper three inches long by two inches wide, and butter them over. Pour the paste into a pocket furnished with a channeled socket and push through on to each paper band a string of paste to form a large S, both ends being rolled. Heat some fat made with beef kidney suet and lard in a large frying pan, and when this is hot plunge in sufficient of the fritters to cover the surface; lift off the papers as quickly as they detach from the paste and fry the fritters slowly while turning them over; when fried and of a fine color drain them on a sieve. After they become partly cold dip them one by one in a clear rum icing made with fine sugar and the liquor. Drain and place them at once on a pastry grate laid on top of a tin plate so that the icing drains off properly; when the fritters are dry dress and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A piped choux fritter, fried on its paper and finished with a rum glaze. Ranhofer assumes you already know the paste from No. 3047, so the whole recipe hinges on details he leaves unsaid.

"Cream cake paste"This is pâte à choux — the same paste used for cream puffs and éclairs. A standard batch is 1 cup water, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup flour and 4 eggs, beaten in one at a time until the paste is glossy and just falls from the spoon.
"A pocket furnished with a channeled socket"A piping bag fitted with a fluted or star tip, which gives the ridged surface the S is meant to show.
The paper bandsButtered paper is how a pastry cook of Ranhofer's day moved wet piped paste into hot fat without deforming it. Parchment cut to the same 3 x 2 inches serves the same purpose; the paper should loosen shortly after the fritter hits the fat, and Ranhofer says to lift it off as soon as it detaches.
Frying temperatureRanhofer gives no temperature, only "fry slowly." In modern terms that suggests moderate rather than hot fat: choux puffs hard and the interior is still raw when the outside has colored, so very hot fat risks a browned shell over a wet center. Judge by color and allow several minutes, turning.
The frying fatBeef kidney suet rendered with lard gives a high smoke point and a clean flavor. Any neutral oil with a smoke point above 400F substitutes without trouble.
Don't crowd, and expect them to turn themselvesCrowding -- Ranhofer says to plunge in enough fritters to cover the surface, and to turn them over as they fry. In a domestic pan that much at once will drop the fat temperature sharply, so work in smaller batches and turn them as he directs.
Rum icingA glace-type icing: roughly 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar worked with 2-3 tablespoons dark rum until it coats a spoon but still runs. Ranhofer's "clear" most likely indicates a thin, transparent glaze rather than an opaque fondant, though he does not spell it out.
Cool before glazing"Partly cold" is deliberate: hot fritters will thin the icing and it will run straight off. Aim for barely warm, and let them drain on a rack over a tray as he directs so the excess runs clear.
YieldRanhofer gives no yield. A batch of choux of the size suggested above would pipe roughly two dozen S-shaped fritters. They are best eaten soon after glazing and do not keep.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked during some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the fritter chapter is one of the clearest places to see how much of that kitchen ran on French pastry conventions. Mondain means worldly or fashionable — the sort of name attached to a dish meant to look elegant on a supper table rather than to describe anything about its contents. Fried choux paste was already a long-established family by then, running from the plain beignet soufflé to the puffs called pets-de-nonne, and the trick of piping onto buttered paper and floating the paper into the fat is a professional's solution to a professional's problem: keeping a soft shape intact between bench and fryer. Ranhofer's numbered cross-references, here to No. 3047, are typical of the book, which was written for cooks who would read it as a working system rather than dish by dish.