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Crullers
Beat three eggs well with four tablespoonfuls of sugar, add four tablespoonfuls of melted lard, then flour enough to make it not too stiff. Roll rather thin (one-third of an inch), cut the cakes into shapes and throw them into boiling lard, like doughnuts.
A bare-bones fried cake from the era when a cook was expected to judge dough by feel. Two things are left to you: how much flour, and how hot the fat is.
- Flour "enough"With three eggs and four tablespoons each of sugar and fat, expect roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of flour. Stop when the dough is soft but no longer sticks to the fingers; too much flour gives a hard, bready cruller.
- No leavening, and that is deliberateNo leavening -- There is no baking powder or saleratus in the recipe. Such lift as there is comes from the beaten eggs and from steam in the hot fat, so beat the eggs and sugar until pale and thick and do not knock the air out when mixing in the flour.
- "Boiling lard" means 365-375F"Boiling lard" -- Fat does not actually boil; the phrase refers to fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around the dough. The recipe gives no temperature, but modern practice for fried cakes is around 365-375F. Use a thermometer: much below 350F and the cakes drink grease, much above 385F and they brown before the centre sets.
- Four tablespoonfuls of melted lardThat is 1/4 cup. Melted butter or a neutral shortening works, though lard gives the shorter, crisper crumb the recipe was built around. For frying, any fat with a high smoke point will do.
- Salt and flavourThe original specifies neither. A half teaspoon of salt and a little grated nutmeg, mace or lemon zest are period-appropriate additions and keep the cakes from tasting flat.
- Cutting and shapingA third of an inch is thicker than a pie crust and thinner than a doughnut round. Traditional cruller shapes are strips slashed down the middle and pulled through themselves, or twisted ropes; rings work equally well.
- Frying in batchesAdd only four or five at a time so the fat temperature holds. Turn once when the underside is deep gold, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes a side, and drain on paper.
- YieldAbout two dozen small crullers. They are at their best within a few hours of frying; the recipe says nothing about finishing them, though rolling in sugar while still warm is a common treatment.
The name is generally traced to the Dutch krullen, to curl, and is associated with the Dutch settlements of New York and New Jersey, where fried dough in twists and knots featured in holiday baking. Nineteenth-century cookbooks treat crullers and doughnuts as near cousins, distinguished mainly by shape and by the crullers' richer, egg-raised dough, which is why this recipe can simply say "like doughnuts" and expect to be understood. The unspecified flour is typical of the genre and of the assumption that a reader had made fried cakes before.