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Sweet-Corn Fritters
Hash very finely a pint can well-drained sweet corn and place it in a bowl; add two tablespoons fine sugar, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, a saltspoon ground cinnamon, half teaspoon baking powder, four tablespoons flour, two whole fresh eggs and one gill cold milk. Mix the whole well together for two minutes. Heat in a large black frying pan three tablespoons leaf lard; then drop the paste into the pan in six equal parts, keeping them apart from one another, and gently cook for five minutes on each side. Lift them up with a skimmer, drain well and serve.
A sweet, spiced corn fritter of the shallow-fried kind, cooked as six large cakes rather than spoon-sized drops. The measurements are the main obstacle.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the batter takes 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.
- GillOne gill is half a cup, so 4 fl oz of milk. That is a fairly loose batter held together by only 4 tablespoons of flour, which is why the fritters must be cooked slowly and turned once.
- A pint can of cornA pint can, well drained, gives somewhere around 1 1/2 cups of kernels; one standard 15-oz can of modern corn, drained, comes close. Frozen corn thawed and patted dry works equally well.
- Hash very finelyChop the drained kernels on a board or pulse them briefly in a food processor until broken but not pureed. Breaking the skins releases starch and milk from the kernels, which helps the eggs and flour bind the mixture.
- Leaf lardLeaf lard is the mild fat from around the kidneys, still sold by some butchers. Ordinary lard, bacon fat or a neutral oil substitutes without complaint; three tablespoons in a wide pan is a shallow fry, not a deep one.
- Black frying panCast iron, for even heat that will not spot-scorch a sugared batter. Keep the heat at medium; the two tablespoons of sugar will brown well before five minutes are up over a high flame.
- TimingFive minutes a side is right only at a moderate temperature, and it is needed to cook the raw flour and egg through the thickness of the cake. If they are dark at three minutes the pan is too hot.
- Yield and servingSix large fritters, enough for three as a side or two or three as a sweet course. The sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon put them nearer a dessert fritter than a savoury one; they take well to maple syrup or a dusting of powdered sugar, and corn fritters are often served alongside ham or fried chicken.
Corn fritters belong to the long American habit of treating maize as a batter vegetable, and by the time this book appeared the canned pint of sweet corn had made them a year-round dish rather than a late-summer one. Canning had reached its stride in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and sweet corn was among the staple products; a recipe that opens by draining a can is quietly announcing itself as modern. The sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon here place the fritters on the older, sweeter side of the tradition, where fritters of all kinds sat somewhere between a vegetable dish and a dessert, and where the same batter method served apples, bananas and corn alike.