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Fried Cream
Scald one pint of milk in a double boiler, with one inch of stick cinnamon. Beat together two eggs, add one-quarter of a cupful of cold milk, one tablespoonful of flour, two tablespoonfuls of corn starch, one-quarter of a teaspoonful of salt and one-half of a cupful of sugar. Add to this the scalded milk, first removing the cinnamon; mix together, return to the double boiler and cook for fifteen minutes, stirring frequently. Lastly, add one teaspoonful of butter, two tablespoonfuls of blanched almonds chopped fine, and one teaspoonful of vanilla and pour into a shallow square pan, which has been well greased. When cold and stiff, turn out on a board, cut it into strips, dip in slightly beaten egg, roll in fine bread crumbs; do this twice, then immerse in smoking hot fat. Drain on paper and dust with powdered sugar before sending to the table.
A stiff cornstarch custard, chilled, breaded and deep-fried — the Italian crema fritta under an American name. The whole dish depends on the custard setting hard enough to cut and handle.
- Cook the custard longer than feels rightFifteen minutes in a double boiler is not padding; the starch has to be fully cooked out and the paste thick enough to hold a knife edge. Undercooked custard will slump on the board and burst in the fat.
- Chill thoroughly"When cold and stiff" means several hours, and overnight in the refrigerator is better. The recipe specifies only a well-greased shallow square pan; roughly 3/4 inch deep (an 8-inch pan suits this quantity) works, with plastic wrap or buttered paper pressed on the surface to stop a skin forming.
- Double breading is not optionalThe instruction to dip in egg and crumb twice is the hinge of the recipe. A single coat splits in the fryer and the custard runs out. Chill the breaded strips again for 20-30 minutes before frying.
- Smoking hot fatRead this as very hot fat, in the region of 375F. Much cooler and the crumb soaks fat while the custard softens; much hotter and the coating colours before it sets. Fry in small batches and give the oil time to recover.
- Stick cinnamonA one-inch piece of cinnamon quill infused in the scalding milk, then removed. Ground cinnamon is not a substitute here — it would cloud the custard and speckle the finished slices.
- Blanched almondsWhole almonds with the skins slipped off after a minute in boiling water, then chopped fine. Slivered blanched almonds from a packet, chopped further, do the same job.
- YieldA pint of milk gives roughly sixteen to twenty finger-sized strips — six to eight servings as a dessert. Serve them hot, within minutes of frying, or the custard centre stiffens as it cools.
Fried cream is one of those dishes that turns up in English-language cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a genteel restaurant dessert, borrowed from the Italian crema fritta and the Spanish leche frita, both of which set a thick milk-and-starch custard, cut it, bread it and fry it. Its appearance in a general household manual like this one reflects how far cornstarch had penetrated the American kitchen: commercially milled corn starch was sold in boxes for domestic use from the middle of the nineteenth century, and it made stiff moulded custards cheaper and more reliable than purely egg-thickened creams.