Lucky dip - apple fritters

"There can be few people who will not succumb to the temptation of a crisp apple fritter. Serve them sprinkled with sugar (granulated, caster or cinnamon-flavoured) or doused in hot syrup, and serve them quickly - no fritter will remain crisp if made to wait." Robert Carrier

I actually have a long list of possible subjects for posts, but I'm feeling lazy so I did the lucky dip thing - which I haven't actually done for ages. I turned up volume 5 of Robert Carrier's Cookery Course - and I will do a post tomorrow on this and other cookery courses. Today I am dealing with the recipe I found on the page I opened it at - apple fritters.

And so far, the most interesting thing I have found about this dish is how it has almost vanished from cookery books. I looked up the Guardian, and all the usual suspects online, browsed through my cookbooks and could not find much at all. Indeed the only recipes I found on my shelves (it was not an exhaustive search), were in a historical centred American cookbook The American Heritage Cookbook, and a lovely book called Wild Blackberry Cobbler and Other Old-fashioned Recipes, which is also focussed on very old recipes. And in Robert Carrier of course. Not Jane Grigson though.

There are, of course recipes for apple fritters online but not from your modern trendy cooks - or even Delia or Nigella, who doesn't seem to mind being unhealthy. Martha Stewart - yes - they must still be big in America - but not anyone else whose name I recognised. Why? Well they aren't healthy are they? I mean sugar, batter, deep-frying. Mind you there are lots of fritter recipes - for trendy vegetables mostly and also, mostly shallow fried rather than deep-fried, though personally I don't think there is a lot of difference in terms of the final calories. So is it the batter? Well tempura batter is also fashionable - so I'm not quite sure what the problem is. After all a lot of unhealthy food is eaten as well as the healthy stuff. Maybe it is just a fashion thing and their time will come.

But whilst we are still on health - these particular fritters are from Weight Watchers! I looked at the recipe and it seemed to me that the only 'healthy' substitutes were skimmed milk and egg substitute (whatever that is). And they are shallow-fried rather than deep-fried - but in butter! So I'm not really sure how they qualify for a Weight Watchers recommendation. Click on the picture and you can find the recipe.

Fritters go back to at least the Romans, if not before. And so I looked for old recipes and found one from medieval times called Frutours. These are made with a beer batter and include yeast, so are not really like what we mostly know as apple fritters but here is the recipe (translated into modern English). The picture is supposed to be them, but I'm not sure that they look like how I imagine the recipe would turn out.

"Four large cooking apples make a lot of fritters, but they melt in the mouth and will disappear fast." Wild Blackberry Cobbler and Other Old-fashioned Recipes

FRUTOURS

I imagine you could use a different fat for the frying.

4 large cooking apples

For the batter

115g plain flour, pinch salt, 15g fresh yeast, 3 tablespoons warm water, 1/2 level teaspoon sugar, 6 tablespoons (90ml) pale ale, 2 egg yolks, 55-85g lard for frying.

Sit the flour and salt into a bowl. Blend the yeast with the warm water and add the sugar. Pour into the centre of the flour. Add the pale ale, and using a wooden spoon draw in the flour and beat well to make a smooth batter. Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place for 30 minutes. Lightly mix the egg yolks and stir into the batter before using.

Peel, core and slice the apples thinly. Dip them in the batter and then add to a frying pan of melted, hot lard. Fry until they are golden brown, turning them to cook both sides. Fry a few at a time, adding flakes of lard to the pan as needed. Serve the hot fritters dusted with caster sugar.

Robert Carrier, who is the inspiration for this post, was born in America and so had a nostalgic love of apple fritters - and other fritters too. His volume 5 has lots of them. His recipe is similar in some ways to the medieval one - without the ale or the yeast. Here is his apple fritter recipe:

APPLE FRITTERS

Fritter batter

4 oz. plain flour, pinch of salt, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 8 tablespoons tepid water, 2 egg whites

Sift flour and salt into a bowl, and make a well in the centre. Pour in olive oil and tepid water and stir with a wooden spoon, gradually incorporating flour from sides of well until blended to a smooth batter. Leave to rest for 30 minutes.

When ready to use batter, whisk egg whites until stiff but not dry, and fold in gently but thoroughly. Use immediately.

4 crisp eating apples, about 1lb, lemon juice, oil for deep-frying.

Peel apples and cut them into thin slices. Carefully remove core from each slice. Drop apple slices into a bowl of water, acidulated with lemon juice as you prepare them to prevent discolouration. (It would seem easier to me to core the apples before slicing.)

When ready to fry fritters, whisk egg whites and fold into batter (see batter recipe).

Heat a pan of oil for deep-frying to 375ºF.

Drain apple slices and dry each one carefully with a clean cloth or kitchen paper.

Coat slices in batter, holding them over the bowl for a few seconds to drain off excess, and deep-fry in hot oil, a few at a time, until crisp and golden, turning once.

Drain thoroughly on absorbent paper and serve immediately.

Both of these recipes sliced the apples but there are also recipes out there for grated and chopped apples. Then you might end up with something like this. In this type of recipe you mix the apples into the batter and then drop spoonfuls into the hot oil.

So there you are. A decadent, rapidly becoming, it seems, historical treat. I wonder how long before somebody makes them fashionable again.