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Fritters of Four Nations
These were supposed to have been originated by a French cook to commemorate a peace treaty several centuries ago. Peel and slice two large fine apples, remove the core, and cover them with 1 ounce of sugar and a tablespoonful of brandy for 1/2 hour. Drain them, dip each piece in jam, peach, or apricot, then in frying batter, and fry them in boiling fat. Glaze with sugar and serve at once with a good sauce.
A straightforward apple fritter with a jam layer between fruit and batter. The only tricky parts are keeping the jam in place and getting the fat hot enough.
- The hinge: dry apples, thick jamDrain the macerated slices and blot them dry, or the batter will slide off in the fat. Use a stiff, well-set jam rather than a runny preserve; warm apricot jam will run straight out of the coating.
- Slice thicknessThe recipe is silent. Rings about 1/4 inch thick, cored with a small cutter, hold together and cook through in the time the batter takes to brown. Thicker slices give raw apple inside a dark crust.
- "Frying batter"A period cookbook assumes you know the standard one: roughly 1 cup flour, a pinch of salt, an egg, and enough milk, water, or beer to make a coating batter, sometimes with a stiffly beaten white folded in at the end. Any modern beer batter or tempura-style batter works.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil at frying temperatures; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around the food. In modern terms that is roughly 350-375F, though the book gives no figure. Cooler than that and the fritters absorb oil; hotter and the batter colours before the apple softens.
- An ounce of sugarAbout 2 tablespoons, which is modest for two apples. The brandy and sugar are there to draw juice and perfume the fruit, not to sweeten it heavily.
- "Glaze with sugar"Most likely a dusting of fine sugar over the drained fritters, flashed under a salamander until it melts and shines, though the recipe does not say. A broiler set high does the same in under a minute; watch it, because the sugar goes from glossy to burnt quickly.
- The sauceNo sauce is specified. A thin apricot sauce made from the same jam let down with water and a little brandy, or a plain custard, both suit.
- YieldTwo apples give roughly 12 to 16 rings, enough for two to four people as a dessert. Fry in small batches so the fat temperature does not drop, and serve immediately; they collapse as they cool.
The peace-treaty story attached here is the kind of origin tale that circulated freely in cookbooks of the period and should be treated as a pleasant fiction rather than history, as should the title's claim on four nations. What is real is the technique: fritters of fruit dipped in batter and deep-fried were common across European cooking long before this book, and the French version, beignets aux pommes, was familiar restaurant and household fare by the nineteenth century. The refinement here, a layer of apricot or peach jam sealed between fruit and batter, gives plain fruit a jammy interior. If the glaze was indeed finished under a salamander, that points to a kitchen with professional equipment.