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French Fritter Batter
Put a heaping cupful of flour into a bowl; add two yolks of eggs, a tablespoonful of olive oil, which is better than melted butter and one or two tablespoonfuls of brandy, wine or lemon juice. (The brandy, wine or lemon juice may be omitted if preferred.) Stir it well, adding little by little water enough to give it the thickness of ordinary batter. This may be used at once; but it is better to put it away for a day, or even for a week. At the moment of cooking, stir in well the whites of two eggs beaten to a stiff froth.
A classic pâte à frire: a lean yolk-and-oil batter lightened with stiff whites at the last second. Two things decide the result — how long the batter rests and how you handle the whites.
- Fold, don't stirDespite the wording, the beaten whites should be folded in gently just before frying, not beaten in. Stirring knocks out the air that makes the coating puff and lace; a few streaks of white left visible are better than a smooth batter.
- Rest the batter coldThe overnight or week-long rest hydrates the flour and relaxes the gluten, giving a thinner, crisper coat. Do it covered in the refrigerator, not in a larder — a raw-yolk batter left at room temperature for days is not a risk worth taking.
- A heaping cupfulRoughly 5 to 6 oz of flour by weight. The recipe specifies nothing beyond 'flour'; plain all-purpose works, and measure lightly rather than packing the cup.
- The water is undeclaredExpect somewhere near 3/4 cup, but add it in stages and judge by feel. The batter should coat a spoon and fall from it in a thick ribbon — thin enough to drain off fruit, thick enough to cling.
- Why brandy or lemon juiceAlcohol evaporates faster than water and the acid slightly weakens the gluten, so both give a lighter, drier crust. Omitting them, as the recipe allows, gives a slightly heavier coating.
- Frying temperatureThe original assumes a cook who judges fat by eye. Use 360-375F: below that the batter soaks fat, above it the outside colors before the puff sets.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield and names nothing to coat. As a rough guide, this quantity will batter something in the order of 1 lb of prepared fruit or similar.
This is a standard French frying batter as it reached American cookbooks, and its structure — yolks and oil worked into flour, whites folded in at the last moment — is the same one taught in French professional kitchens as pâte à frire. The insistence on olive oil over melted butter is a detail carried straight from that tradition: butter's milk solids brown and its water content works against a crisp shell. So is the note that the batter improves after standing, a piece of practical knowledge about gluten that cooks observed long before anyone could explain it. Fritters of this kind were a cheap, showy way to finish a meal, turning a few apples or a stale-ish banana into something that arrived at the table puffed and hot.