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Pan Daddlings
Mrs. Rogers.
Four cups rye meal, two cups of Indian meal, one cup of molasses, plenty ef suet, a little allspice, one egg, milk to thin it to a batter that will drop from the spoon, one teaspoon of soda, three chopped apples; fry in hot lard like fried cakes; dip the spoon in the lard and dip up your batter and drop into hot lard; fry a light brown.
A drop-batter fritter of rye and cornmeal, leavened by soda reacting with molasses and enriched with suet. The original leaves both the quantity of fat and the frying temperature to judgment, so those are the two things worth pinning down.
- The hinge: batter consistencyEverything depends on a batter thick enough to hold its shape when dropped but loose enough to fall from the spoon in one mass. Rye and cornmeal both absorb liquid slowly, so mix, wait five minutes, then adjust with milk before you commit the first spoonful to the fat.
- Indian mealNineteenth-century shorthand for cornmeal, usually stone-ground yellow and coarser than modern supermarket meal. Medium-grind yellow cornmeal is the closest match; fine degerminated meal will give a smoother, less interesting fritter.
- Rye meal vs. rye flourRye meal is coarsely ground whole rye, not the light sifted rye flour sold for bread. Dark or medium whole rye flour works; expect a slightly denser fritter than white flour would give.
- "Plenty of suet"Read this as about half a cup of beef suet, finely shredded or chopped, worked into the dry meal. Butchers will supply it on request; frozen suet grates more easily than fresh. Frozen grated butter is a workable substitute, though the texture is softer.
- SodaOne teaspoon of soda is baking soda; period cooks also used saleratus, a closely related leavener, though the two were not always treated as the same article. It is balanced by the acid in the molasses, so use real unsulphured molasses rather than a syrup or treacle blend, and get the batter into the fat promptly once the soda is mixed in.
- ApplesThree chopped apples means peeled and cut small, roughly a quarter inch, or they will not cook through in the time the batter takes to brown. A firm tart variety holds its shape.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only 'hot lard'; for drop batters that is usually taken to mean somewhere around 350-375F. Below that the fritters absorb fat and go heavy; above it the outside colors before the interior sets. A deep pan filled no more than a third, and six or so at a time, keeps the temperature steady.
- Dipping the spoonThe instruction to dip the spoon in the lard first is not decoration — the film of hot fat lets the sticky batter slide off cleanly. Repeat it for each fritter.
- Yield and servingSix cups of meal plus milk, apples and suet makes a large batch, so expect well over two dozen fritters at walnut size. Drain on paper, serve warm, with more molasses or a dusting of sugar.
"Pan daddlings" belongs to a family of homely New England dish names -- alongside pan dowdy, slump and grunt -- whose spellings shifted from cook to cook and whose origins are traditional rather than documented. The recipe itself is a clear picture of a rural household economy: rye and Indian meal were everyday grains in the north long after wheat flour became available, molasses was a cheap sweetener that came by the barrel from the West Indies trade, and suet and lard were fats a family often rendered itself rather than bought. One egg for the whole batch is a modest allowance. This one arrives under a contributor's name -- Mrs. Rogers -- as community-compiled cookbooks of the period generally did, which is also why the measurements assume you already know what the batter should look like.