Home › Luncheon › Bread and Raisin Balls
Bread and Raisin Balls
1 tablespoon Karo 1 tablespoon Argo or 1¾ cups dry bread crumbs 1¼ cups mashed banana 3/4 cup chopped raisins 3/4 cup chopped nut meats (any kind) Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup milk or water Combine the ingredients and let stand twenty minutes. Form into balls, dip in fine dry bread crumbs, then in an egg white slightly beaten and mixed with one-fourth cup water, then in crumbs again and fry in deep fat, half filling the kettle with Mazola. Heat to 375 degrees F. or until a bit of bread will brown in forty counts. Serve with Lemon Nutmeg Sauce. 1 cup Karo, Red Label 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1/2 cup water 1 tablespoon Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch Few grains salt 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg Combine the Karo, water, salt and nutmeg. Boil five minutes, thicken with the cornstarch stirred with one tablespoon cold water. Add the lemon juice, nutmeg and serve.
A brand-book luncheon croquette, sweet rather than savoury, held together with banana and fried in deep fat. The ingredient list has been scrambled in transcription, so read it carefully before you shop.
- Untangling the ingredient listThe columns have run together. Read it as: 1 tablespoon Karo, 1 tablespoon Argo or Kingsford's cornstarch, 1¾ cups dry bread crumbs, 1¼ cups mashed banana, ¾ cup chopped raisins, ¾ cup chopped nut meats, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 cup milk or water. Additional dry crumbs for coating are needed on top of the 1¾ cups.
- The brand namesKaro is corn syrup; the "Red Label" called for in the sauce was the darker grade. Argo and Kingsford's are both cornstarch, offered interchangeably because Corn Products Refining Company owned both. Mazola is corn oil; any neutral frying oil works.
- Why it stands twenty minutesThe rest is the hinge. Dry crumbs need that time to absorb the milk and banana, and the mixture firms as they swell. Shape too early and the balls slump in the fat.
- Frying temperature375°F is stated outright. The "forty counts" bread test is a rough count of seconds and is worth ignoring in favour of a thermometer. Fry in small batches so the oil does not drop below about 350°F.
- Half filling the kettleMeant literally for a deep, narrow kettle. In a modern pot, three to four inches of oil is enough, and never more than halfway up the sides, since banana-heavy batter throws off steam and the fat will foam up when the balls go in.
- The egg-white washOne white beaten with ¼ cup water is thinner than a whole-egg wash and gives a lighter shell. The double crumbing — crumb, wash, crumb — is what keeps a soft interior from bursting; do not skip the first coat.
- The sauceNutmeg is listed once and called for twice. Add the ⅛ teaspoon with the syrup and water, and leave the second addition out. Boil five minutes, then thicken with the cornstarch slurry and cook a minute more so the starch loses its raw taste; the lemon juice goes in off the heat to keep it bright.
- YieldNo yield is stated. They are best within minutes of frying — reheating turns the coating leathery.
This appears to come from a promotional cookbook of the kind issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, whose Karo, Argo, Kingsford's and Mazola brands appear in nearly every line of the recipe — the point of such books was to show a housewife that four products from the same firm could carry a whole menu, though no date or title is given. Sweet fried croquettes served as a luncheon dish are often said to have been a feature of American cookery of the early twentieth century, when the midday meal was lighter and a fruit-and-nut course could stand in for meat. Corn syrup was promoted as an economical alternative to cane sugar, and the recipe's use of banana as both sweetener and binder may reflect how cheap and widely shipped that fruit was becoming.