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Apple Fritters (Make a batter with one cupful)
Make a batter with one cupful of sweet milk, one teaspoonful of sugar, two eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, two cupfuls of flour, one teaspoonful of baking powder mixed with flour. Chop some good tart apples, mix in the batter and fry in hot lard. Serve with maple syrup.
A drop-batter fritter rather than a dipped apple ring, so the apple has to be chopped fine enough to cook through in the time the batter takes to brown. Everything else here is standard, with one gap: the recipe never says how much apple.
- How much appleThe original leaves it open. Two medium tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped to about 1/4 inch, is right for this quantity of batter; more than that and the fritters fall apart in the fat.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk. The term only exists to distinguish it from sour milk or buttermilk, which would have called for saleratus or soda instead of baking powder.
- Separated eggsFold the beaten whites in last, after the apple. This is the only leavening beyond the teaspoon of baking powder and it is what keeps the interior light rather than pasty.
- Frying fat and temperatureLard works well and gives a clean flavour; any neutral fat with a high smoke point does the same job. "Hot" is not defined here; for fritters of this kind a range of roughly 365-375F is usual, and the recipe does not say whether the fat was deep or shallow. Too cool and they soak; too hot and the outside sets before the apple softens.
- Size and timingDrop by rounded tablespoon and fry 3 to 4 minutes, turning once, until deep gold all through. Split one to check the centre before committing the batch.
- Apple choice"Good tart" likely meant a firm cooking apple. Granny Smith or Northern Spy hold their shape; a soft eating apple turns to sauce inside the batter.
- YieldAbout 18 fritters, serving four to six. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the undersides stay crisp, and serve within a few minutes.
Fritters of this sort were a fixture of American cookbooks through the nineteenth century, a cheap way to turn a cup of milk and a couple of apples into a hot dish at breakfast or supper. The word reaches English through Old French and Middle English friture, ultimately from Latin frigere, to fry, and the technique is far older than the batter here. The teaspoonful of baking powder points to a late date: commercial baking powder became a reliable pantry staple only in the second half of the 1800s, and it gradually displaced the older combination of saleratus and sour milk. The maple syrup suggests a northern United States or Canadian context, though syrup was sold well beyond the sugaring districts.