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Pear Fritters (Peel cut in halves remove)
Peel, cut in halves, remove the seeds from six ripe, sweet, medium-sized pears, place on a plate, add tablespoon powdered sugar, half a teaspoon ground cinnamon and one tablespoon maraschino, turn well in the seasoning and let infuse for fifteen minutes. Prepare a frying batter. Roll the pears in the batter and drop, one by one, in boiling fat and gently fry for ten minutes, turning with a skimmer occasionally. Lift up, drain on a cloth, lightly trim them, sprinkle over a little powdered sugar, dress on a dish with a folded napkin laid over and serve.
A straightforward beignet of fruit, written for a cook who already knows how to make a frying batter and how to judge fat by eye. Two things need adjusting: the frying time and the choice of pear.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" means deep fat at roughly 350-360F. Below that the batter absorbs grease; much above it and the coating colors before the fruit inside is hot.
- Ten minutes is too longTen minutes is likely too long -- halved pears in batter should be coloured through in about four to five minutes at 350F, turning once. Held that long the crust darkens and takes up grease before the fruit gains anything. If your halves are unusually large, quarter them rather than extend the time.
- Choose pears that are ripe but firmBosc or Anjou hold their shape in hot fat; a fully soft Bartlett or Comice will fall apart in the batter. "Ripe, sweet" here means fragrant and just yielding, not soft.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period the term usually means finely ground granulated sugar rather than modern confectioners' sugar. Either works for the maceration; use confectioners' sugar for the dusting at the end, since it clings.
- MaraschinoThe clear cherry liqueur distilled from Marasca cherries, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. A tablespoon of kirsch or a good pear brandy substitutes well. Fifteen minutes is enough to season the cut surfaces; longer does no harm.
- Frying batterThe recipe assumes a basic batter the cook already knows, presumably given elsewhere in the book. Any standard fritter batter suits: about 1 cup flour, a pinch of salt, an egg yolk, enough milk or beer to make a coating consistency, with the beaten white folded in just before use so it clings and puffs.
- "Lightly trim them"This means cutting away the straggling fringe of fried batter with scissors or a knife so each fritter is a neat oval. Purely cosmetic, and worth thirty seconds.
- Draining and servingDrain on paper towels rather than cloth, and sugar them while still hot. The folded napkin on the dish absorbs steam and keeps the crusts from going soft. Six pears give twelve halves, enough for six as a dessert; they do not hold, so fry at the last moment.
Fruit fritters were a fixture of the restaurant dessert list, and this one belongs to the French repertoire that American hotel kitchens ran on: fruit macerated in sugar, spice and a spirit, coated, deep-fried, dusted and sent out on a napkin. The napkin was convention as much as decoration -- sur serviette was a standard presentation for fried dishes, the folded linen soaking up fat and steam on the way to the table. Maraschino is the clear liqueur distilled from Marasca cherries, long associated with Zara on the Dalmatian coast; it was a bar and pastry staple and appears often in books of the era as a finishing note for stewed and macerated fruit. Its later fate -- the name attaching to the dyed, syruped cocktail cherry -- has made the instruction confusing to modern readers who have only met the jar.