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Crullies
Mrs. Snider.
Three eggs, two cups of sugar, one cup of butter, two cups of sour milk, two teaspoons of Cook's Friend, spice, flour to stiffen cut in rings and fry in hot lard.
A doughnut batter written in the shorthand of a cook who never measured flour: the dough is stiffened by feel, cut in rings, and fried. Everything hinges on getting the dough soft enough to stay tender and firm enough to hold a ring.
- Cook's FriendA branded chemical leavener sold in Canada in the later nineteenth century, roughly equivalent to modern baking powder. Two teaspoons of baking powder is the direct substitute; with the sour milk in the recipe, about a teaspoon of baking soda plus a teaspoon of baking powder gives a closer approximation of the original lift.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk from the refrigerator, but naturally soured raw milk — thick, tangy, and mildly acidic. Buttermilk is the standard stand-in, cup for cup.
- "Flour to stiffen"Genuinely unquantified, and the amount depends on your flour and how soft you want the dough. Expect several cups for this quantity of liquid; add it a cup at a time until the dough is soft but no longer sticky, and stop there. Overfloured cruller dough fries up dry and heavy.
- Chill before cuttingThis is the instruction the original leaves out. A dough this rich and soft is far easier to roll and cut after an hour in the refrigerator, and cold dough absorbs less fat in the fryer.
- "Spice"Left to the cook. Nutmeg is a common choice in crullers of this period, about a teaspoon grated; cinnamon or mace, or a mixture, are equally in keeping.
- Frying fat and temperatureThe recipe says only "hot lard"; in modern terms aim for roughly 365-375F. Below that the rings soak up grease; much above it and the outside colours before the centre sets. Fry a test ring first and cut it open.
- YieldThree eggs and two cups of sugar make a large batch — roughly three to four dozen rings, depending on your cutter. Halve it comfortably if you are not feeding a crowd.
"Crullies" is one of many spellings — cruller, crullie, kruller — descending from the Dutch krullen, to curl, and the word travelled into North American English with Dutch settlement before spreading well beyond it. By the period of this book, the fried sweetened dough ring was familiar household baking in Ontario and the northern states, cheap in ingredients and quick on a wood stove that was already hot. The reliance on sour milk points to a kitchen where milk was kept in a crock rather than a refrigerator and soured predictably enough to be a planned ingredient; the two teaspoons of Cook's Friend, a proprietary Canadian leavener, show the same cook reaching for the new packaged convenience alongside the old one. Recipes in this book are credited to the women who contributed them, and Mrs. Snider's is typical in trusting the reader to know how stiff a cruller dough should be.