Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Apple Fritters
Apple Fritters
M.
One teacup of sweet milk, one tablespoon of sweet light dough dissolved in milk, three eggs beaten separately, one teaspoon of salt, one and one-half teacups of flour, one tablespoon of sugar, and the grated peel of a lemon, peeled apples sliced without the core; drop into hot lard with a piece of apple in each one; sprinkle with powdered or spiced sugar. Let them stand after making and they will be lighter.
A yeast-raised fritter batter rather than a baking-powder one, which is what the odd phrase "one tablespoon of sweet light dough" is doing here. That single detail governs how the recipe behaves.
- Sweet light doughThis is a lump of risen bread dough, borrowed from the day's baking and slaked in the milk to act as leaven. A scant teaspoon of instant yeast stands in for it; if you do use bread dough, take it while it is still active and sweet-smelling, not sour.
- The resting is the recipeThe closing line is the point: a yeasted batter wants time at room temperature, until it looks puffed and bubbled, before it will fry light. The receipt gives no interval; an hour or so is the usual practical allowance. Fried straight after mixing it is likely to be dense and bready.
- TeacupNineteenth-century American receipts vary widely in what a teacup means, anywhere from about a half to three-quarters of a modern cup. Treat the milk and flour as proportional rather than absolute and adjust to a thick batter that coats an apple slice without sliding off.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the buttermilk or soured milk also used in receipts of the period.
- Eggs beaten separatelyYolks and whites beaten apart, the whipped whites folded in rather than stirred through. The receipt does not say at what stage, and its instruction to let the mixture stand after making suggests the whole batter rested together.
- Hot lardDeep-fry at 360-375F. Below that the fritters soak; above it the batter colors before the apple softens. A cube of bread browning in about a minute is the old test.
- The applesFirm tart cooking apples, peeled and cored and cut in rings about a quarter-inch thick. Thicker rings will still be raw when the coating is done.
- Spiced sugarGranulated or confectioner's sugar mixed with cinnamon, and sometimes a little nutmeg or clove. Dust while the fritters are hot so it clings.
- YieldThe receipt gives no yield; the quantities suggest something on the order of a dozen, depending on how large a teacup is taken to be. Fry in batches and serve hot.
Apple fritters belong to a very old European family of fried batters, and the yeast-leavened version in this receipt is the older form -- chemical leavens became widely reliable in American kitchens only in the second half of the century, and books of this vintage often print both kinds side by side. Borrowing a spoonful of "light dough" from the bread trough was simply thrift: a household that baked its own bread regularly had active leaven on hand, and using it cost nothing. The bare initial "M." points to a compilation of contributed receipts, which would also explain why no oven, no timing and no yield is given -- the reader was assumed to know already what a fritter should look like coming out of the fat, and to need only the proportions.