FoodNet

The spirit of cookery

1895

Page 187 · 1 recipe record on this page

Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
French. frituTcs, which comprises all fried articles as well as frying materials. Objects fit for heing fried are pieces of meat, fish, poultry, game, or of fruit, or aggregates of comminuted things, such as minced meat, or pieces of bread, cake, etc., which are enclosed in a wrapper of some kind and fried therein. As a rule, only small objects are called fritters, and objects of the size of a cotelette, o.g., are no longer called fritters. Fritters may be divided in the following orders : Meat, poultry, game, and j^s/i fritters. Croquettes, fritters made of mince or force meat. Kromeskys {d la Btisse), forcemeat balls w'rapped in cowl. Rissoles, forcemeat wrapped in nouilles or ravioli-paste. Rissolettes, small portions of farce on little fried crusts of bread. Croutons, small dice of fried bread, without any additions. The art of frying depends to a large extent for its success on the production of a suitable material with which the article to be fried is to be surrounded ; this material must generally be adhesive, viscous, not fluid in thin layers, and adapting itself to all inequalities of the surface which it is to cover ; it is generally a dough made of flour, eggs, flutter, salt, water or milk, sufficiently liquid to allow the substances to be immersed in it ; it may receive an addition of egg- froth, which makes it a little more spongy ; its technical name is a hatter. The theory of batter is capable of being worked out into a separate essay; there are the varieties of hatter, those, c.g., which are made in large kitchens in quantity to serve for the day, or those which the eremite, or the cook of a young couple, or the young wife herself, may compound for the day’s occasion. The batter for pancake alone is a problem of which we shall have to take notice below, but it may be alluded to in this place. It is applicable (or, as there are several batters for pancake, w^e should say they are 292 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY applicable) to fritters containing slices of apples, inneapples, oranges, peaches, and other fruit. We then have custard fritters, being steamed custard, battered and fried, a useful form for the reservice of remainders ; cake fritters, made, e.g., with remains of brioche, baba or ratan cake, Kugelhopfen, or even roll or bread ; they must be soaked well and long in milk, cream, or some juice, sugared, flavoured, battered, and fried crisp. Whole-hoiled rice, with any juice, and coated with batter, makes excellent fritters, sometimes miscalled croquettes. Varieties are produced by additions and flavours ; thus, the Italians have a favourite variety, rice and ginger fritters, to which they give the name of diavolini. [Brioche fritters, made with the unbaked brioche-paste directly, and Spanish puffs, or petit-choux, rather belong to the class of fritures represented by Krapfen, and not to the present division.] Croquettes are fritures made of balls of mince or force meat, rolled in breadcrumb, dipped in beaten egg, crumbed a second time, and fried in hog’s lardCroquettes to a light colour. There are croquettes of boiled beef, of chicken — elaborate ones, e.g., with tongue and truffles — of sweetbread, pheasant, rabbit, fat livers, lobster, turbot, sole, and others more rare.