No. 3050

Roman Triumvirate Fritters

Beignets Triumvirat Romain

This hot dessert is composed of three sorts of fritters: Stuffed greengages, stuffed pears and stuffed pineapple.

The Stuffed Greengages are made by splitting some very ripe and sound gages through the middle; separate the two parts and remove the stone; apply on the cut side a macaroon paste made by pounding macaroons to a paste with apple jelly (No. 3668) and Kirsch. Give them the original shape, roll them in powdered macaroons and dip in frying batter (No. 137); plunge them into hot frying fat and when the paste is fried and of a fine color, drain and wipe; besprinkle with sugar and glaze either under a salamander (Fig. 123) or in a hot oven.

The Stuffed Pears are made by peeling some medium pears, leaving on the stalks and emptying them from the other end with a vegetable spoon (Fig. 91), removing all the seeds. Cook them in a light syrup, drain and wipe and fill the empty space with candied apricots cut in three-sixteenths inch squares and mingled with apricot marmalade (No. 3675); cork up the opening with a round piece of pear or angelica, and dip them in a frying batter (No. 137), and then in plenty of hot fat to fry to a good golden brown; drain, wipe and bestrew with vanilla sugar.

For Stuffed Pineapples.—Peel a pineapple neatly, and divide it into one-eighth of an inch slices, and each of these in four; lay them in a vessel, pour over some good brandy, and dredge with powdered sugar, leaving them to macerate for half an hour; drain, wipe, put together two by two with a layer of hazelnut paste with cooked sugar (No. 125); press down and dip in frying batter (No.137), then in white frying fat. When the fritters are of a fine color, drain, wipe and lay them on a baking sheet, bestrew with sugar and glaze under a salamander (Fig. 123). Dress in three distinct groups on a folded napkin and serve separately a sauce made of pineapple and prunelle as follows: Mix equal parts of grated pineapple and apricot marmalade (No. 3675); put it in a saucepan on the fire and leave boil up once or twice: then dilute with as much syrup, and flavor nicely with prunelle liquor.

← No. 3049 Strawberry Fritters with Macaroons, Garnishe Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3051 Fruits a la Creole →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have his other 3,000 numbers to hand; this one is really three fritter recipes plus a sauce, assembled as a single plated dessert. The work is all in the prep — the frying itself is a couple of minutes per batch.

The cross-referencesNo. 137 is Ranhofer's frying batter; No. 3668 is apple jelly; No. 3675 is apricot marmalade, i.e. thick apricot jam sieved smooth; No. 125 is his cooked sugar, which the recipe here directs you to work with hazelnuts, so "hazelnut paste with cooked sugar" amounts to a praline paste. Good commercial apricot jam, warmed and strained, and jarred praline paste substitute cleanly.
Fat temperature"White frying fat" appears to mean fresh, clean fat — lard or another neutral rendered fat or refined oil that has not been used for fish or savory work and will not color the batter. Ranhofer gives no temperature; in a modern kitchen around 350-360F suits batter-coated fruit, which needs only a few minutes, since the fruit is already ripe or poached.
SalamanderA tool for browning from above; in Ranhofer's kitchen this was a heated iron passed over the surface rather than the overhead gas grill the word now means. A modern broiler set high, with the tray near the element, does the same job: it melts and caramelizes the dusting sugar in under a minute. Watch it constantly — sugar goes from glazed to burnt very fast. A propane torch also works.
GreengagesSmall green-gold European plums, in season only a few weeks in late summer and rarely sold in North America. Any small, firm, freestone plum works; the point is that the halves must hold their shape around the macaroon filling. Ripe but not soft.
"Vegetable spoon"Fig. 91 is a scoop of the sort now sold as a melon baller or Parisienne spoon. Core the pear from the blossom end, leaving the stalk end intact, so the finished fritter still looks like a pear.
Poaching the pears"A light syrup" is roughly one part sugar to three parts water, simmered until the pears are just tender to a skewer — 10 to 20 minutes depending on ripeness. They must be thoroughly drained and patted dry or the batter will slide off in the fat.
AngelicaCandied angelica stem, used as a green decorative element and here as a plug for the pear cavity. It is a specialty item now; a disc cut from the trimmed pear itself, as Ranhofer also allows, is simpler.
PrunelleA sloe-based liqueur (prunelle de Bourgogne). Sloe gin is the closest easy substitute; a plum brandy or kirsch will flavor the sauce but reads differently. Add it off the heat so it is not driven off.
Yield and serviceFigure two fritters of each kind per person; at four servings that is about eight gages, eight small pears and part of a pineapple, since each gage and each pear makes a single fritter while one pineapple yields plenty of paired slices. Fry in the order given — gages, pears, pineapple — and glaze everything at the end, since fritters collapse if they sit. The folded napkin absorbs fat; a rack over a warm platter does the job less picturesquely.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style at its most theatrical: three separate fritters, three separate fillings, dressed in three distinct groups on one napkin with a fourth preparation served alongside in a sauceboat. The name is a joke about a rule of three — a Roman triumvirate being a board of three men sharing power — of the kind French kitchens liked to attach to composed garnitures, and it tells you the dish was meant to be announced as much as eaten. Fritters occupied a specific slot in the nineteenth-century service order, the entremets, arriving hot after the roast and before the ice; a plate of them was a way to put summer fruit on the table at a moment when the meal was already long past the point of hunger. Greengages, pears and pineapple together make a deliberately varied showing, two of the three being ordinary market fruit.