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Apricot Fritters Au Sabayon
Prepare a batter for fritters. Place twelve preserved half apricots on a plate with a tablespoon sugar and a tablespoon kirsch wasser; mix well in the seasoning and let infuse for ten minutes. Plunge the apricots into the batter and roll well; then plunge, one by one, into very clear boiling fat for eight minutes, or until of a nice golden tint, frequently turning them meanwhile. Lift up with the skimmer, drain on a cloth, neatly trim all around, dress on a dish. Dredge a little powdered sugar over. Pour a Sabayon sauce around the apricots and serve.
A straightforward dessert fritter, but two numbers in the original need adjusting: the frying time is far too long, and the recipe assumes you already know how to make both a fritter batter and a sabayon.
- The frying timeEight minutes in hot fat will scorch the batter and turn the apricots to mush. A coated half apricot needs 2 to 3 minutes at 350-360F, turning once or twice, until evenly golden. The fruit is already cooked; you are only setting the batter.
- "Very clear boiling fat"This means fat that is clean and free of sediment, not fat at a rolling boil; fat does not boil. Lard or rendered beef fat would have been usual in a kitchen of this kind, and a neutral oil with a high smoke point does the same job. Fry no more than four at a time so the temperature does not crash.
- The batterNo recipe is given; the instruction simply assumes a standard frying batter, presumably supplied elsewhere in the book. A workable one is roughly 1 cup flour, a pinch of salt, an egg yolk, about 3/4 cup milk or beer, with the stiffly beaten white folded in at the end. It should coat the back of a spoon and cling to the fruit.
- Preserved apricotsThese are apricot halves in heavy syrup, either home-bottled or canned. Drain them thoroughly and pat dry before macerating, or the batter will slide off and the fat will spit.
- Kirsch wasserKirschwasser is the dry, unsweetened cherry brandy from the Rhine and Black Forest, not a sweet cherry liqueur. A tablespoon over twelve halves is a scent rather than a flavour; the ten-minute infusion is enough.
- Sabayon sauceWhisk 4 egg yolks with 4 tablespoons sugar and about 1/2 cup Marsala, white wine or champagne in a bowl over barely simmering water until thick, foamy and hot to the touch, around 160F. Do not let the bowl touch the water or the yolks will scramble. Sabayon collapses within minutes, so make it last and pour it straight away.
- Draining and trimming"Drain on a cloth" means a napkin or paper; the instruction to "neatly trim all around" refers to snipping off the ragged tails of batter with scissors so each fritter is a clean oval. It is a plating step, not a cooking one.
- YieldTwelve fritters serves four as a dessert, three per plate with the sauce pooled around rather than over, so the batter stays crisp.
Sabayon is the French spelling of the Italian zabaglione, a warm froth of egg yolks, sugar and fortified wine whisked over hot water, generally traced to Piedmont and Naples and long eaten as a restorative as much as a dessert. Its appearance here beside a German cherry spirit and a French-technique fritter is characteristic of the period: the grand hotel and restaurant kitchens of the turn of the century treated European regional dishes as a common vocabulary to be recombined at will. Fried fruit fritters served with a foaming wine sauce turn up together on such menus, both elements being last-minute work that arrives at the table hot.