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Swiss Fritters
Place a pint fresh milk in a small saucepan, and as soon as it boils add one gill white wine and four ounces sugar, then boil for two minutes. Dredge in three ounces farina and half teaspoon cinnamon powder, sharply mix with a spoon for two minutes and let gently boil for fifteen minutes. Add two egg yolks, mix again while heating for three minutes. Remove, transfer it into a lightly buttered tin, neatly smooth the surface and let cool off. Turn it upon a lightly floured table, then cut into equal lozenge pieces, dip them in beaten egg, lightly roll them in cake or bread crumbs, place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for five minutes. Lift them up, drain on a cloth, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
A set semolina pudding, chilled firm, cut, breaded and deep-fried — the same principle as Italian crema fritta. The critical step is the cooling: the paste must be fully cold and firm before cutting, or the pieces collapse in the fat.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. Use a dry white wine; the sugar here is already generous at four ounces (about half a cup) to a pint of milk.
- FarinaFine semolina, or the wheat cereal still sold as farina. Three ounces is roughly half a cup. Coarse semolina works but stays grainy unless you cook it longer.
- Dredge, don't dumpSift or sprinkle the farina in a thin stream while stirring hard, as the text says — added all at once it seizes into lumps that fifteen minutes of cooking will not smooth out.
- The fifteen-minute boilKeep it at a bare simmer over low heat and stir often. Semolina this thick scorches on the bottom of a thin pan; a heavy saucepan is worth using.
- Setting the pasteSpread about 3/4 inch thick in the buttered tin. It needs at least two hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better; "let cool off" here means genuinely cold and sliceable before cutting.
- Lozenge piecesDiamonds cut on the diagonal, roughly 2 inches on a side. Chill the cut pieces again after breading if the kitchen is warm.
- Boiling fat350–375°F. Five minutes is longer than these need at that temperature — the filling is already cooked, so pull them at two to three minutes, when the crumbs are deep gold.
- YieldA pint of milk gives roughly 20 pieces, enough for six as a dessert. Serve hot; the interior softens to a custard and goes pasty once cold.
Fried set custards and semolina pastes run through the cookery of the Alpine regions and northern Italy, where a stiff milk pudding was a cheap way to stretch a little sugar and wine into a company dessert; the Italian crema fritta and the German Griessschnitten are close cousins, and "Swiss fritters" in Anglo-American books of this period appears to have been used loosely rather than for one documented Swiss original. Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) came out of his years in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes reflect the restaurant repertoire of the day, in which national labels were a menu convenience as much as a claim of provenance. The deep-frying basket and the folded napkin on the serving dish are hotel practice; the napkin would have absorbed frying fat before it reached the table.