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Rice Fritters
Mrs. S. McMaster.
Boil three tablespoonsful of rice until it swells to the full size, then drain quite dry and mix with it four eggs well beaten, quarter pound of currants and a little grated lemon peel, nutmeg and sugar to the taste; stir in as much flour as will thicken it, and fry in lard.
A plain nineteenth-century fritter batter bound with rice rather than mostly flour. The instructions assume a cook who knows what a fritter batter should look like, so the flour quantity is left to judgement.
- Rice quantityThree tablespoons of raw rice cooks up to something over half a cup — a small batch. Boil it soft in plenty of water rather than by absorption, then drain and spread it out to dry off; wet rice will thin the batter and make the fritters greasy.
- Flour by feel"As much flour as will thicken it" is genuinely open. Aim for a batter that holds its shape on a spoon and drops without spreading, adding flour a spoonful at a time.
- CurrantsA quarter pound is about 3/4 cup of dried currants, the small Zante grape, not fresh red or black currants. Raisins chopped small are the usual substitute; plumping the fruit briefly in hot water keeps it from scorching in the fat.
- Nutmeg and lemonGrate the nutmeg fresh — a pre-ground jar is a different, flatter spice. The lemon peel means zest only, no white pith.
- Sugar to tasteThe amount is left entirely to the cook. Sugar browns fast in hot fat, so go light and finish with a dusting after frying.
- Frying fatLard fries these well; any neutral fat with a high smoke point works. The recipe does not say how deep — around 350–365F and enough fat for the fritters to move freely, frying in small batches so the temperature holds.
- DonenessTwo to three minutes a side, until deep gold. The egg-and-rice interior needs to set through, so pull one open before committing to the batch.
- ServingEat them hot, within minutes of frying, with sugar, a spoonful of jam, or a wine or lemon sauce.
Rice fritters belong to a large family of Victorian batter-fried sweets — apple, corn, bread, and rice among them — that let a household turn a small amount of a cheap staple into something that read as a dessert. Rice was inexpensive and shelf-stable in North American kitchens by the mid-1800s, and cooks used it much as they used stale bread: as a bulking agent that eggs could bind. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Toronto in the 1870s from contributions by named local women, is one of the earliest Canadian community cookbooks, and the attribution to Mrs. S. McMaster is typical of the form — such collections gathered recipes from contributing households and printed them largely as received. Currants and nutmeg here are the standard English sweet-fritter seasoning, carried over from an older tradition of fried batter puddings.