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Fruit Fritters
1 scant cup flour 2 eggs 1 teaspoon Mazola 1 cup prepared fruit 2 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/3 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup milk 1 teaspoon baking powder The fruits that may be used in making these fritters are: thinly sliced apple: sliced, fresh or canned peaches; stoned, halved prunes or sliced bananas. Siſt together the dry ingredients, then beat in the milk, the egg yolks, beaten till creamy, and the Mazola. Stir in the fruit, fold in the egg whites, whipped, and drop by small tablespoonfuls into Mazola heated to 350 degrees F., sufficient to brown a bit of bread in a minute in a deep fat frying kettle. Cook ten minutes, drain on brown paper, dust with sugar and serve with fruit sauce or Karo.
A straightforward drop-batter fritter from a corn-products promotional booklet, workable as written except for the frying time.
- Ten minutes is far too longTablespoon-sized fritters in 350F oil are cooked through in about three to four minutes, turning once. Ten minutes will give you a hard, dark crust and greasy interior; the batter is thin and the fruit already tender.
- MazolaCorn oil, then and now. The teaspoon in the batter is a tenderiser; the kettle needs enough to float the fritters, roughly two to three inches in a deep pan.
- Argo and Kingsford'sBrand names for plain cornstarch. The two tablespoons lighten the crumb; do not substitute more flour or the fritters turn bready.
- KaroCorn syrup, sold light and dark. The recipe does not specify; light is the likelier intention for a pouring sauce.
- Oil temperatureUse a thermometer rather than the bread-cube test, which is only approximate. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not drop below about 340F.
- Prepared fruitMeans ready to go into the batter: apples peeled, cored and sliced thin; prunes stoned and halved as the recipe says. Canned peaches need draining and blotting, or the extra liquid slackens the batter and the fritters spread.
- Brown paperDraining on brown paper was common in this period, as the recipe directs. A rack set over a sheet pan keeps the undersides crisper than paper does.
- YieldNot stated in the recipe; expect roughly eighteen to two dozen small fritters. Dust with sugar only after draining, or it dissolves into the oil film.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, the concern behind Mazola oil, Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, and Karo syrup. Every branded product in the pantry appears in a single short recipe, which is the point of the genre: such booklets were given away free or sent for a few cents in stamps, and they taught American cooks to reach for corn oil in the frying kettle at a time when lard and butter still dominated. Deep-fried fruit fritters themselves are much older than any of these brands, descending from the batter-dipped fruit of English and French cookery, but the shift here to corn oil, corn starch and corn syrup marks the early twentieth-century moment when the corn refining industry set out to place its products at every stage of a dish, from the batter to the sauce poured over it.