Welcome to How To Cook that I'm Ann Reardon and today we're going to be
making a recipe from my 200 year old cookbook that my mum gave to me. This
episode was requested by my lovely patrons ... if you'd like to get involved
supporting the channel and vote on future episodes I'll put a link to my
Patreon page below. There's a whole section in this book dedicated to
fritter recipes so I thought we might try out four of them and the first one
up is white fritters. Take two ounces of rice and wash it clean in water ... I'm
using brown rice because white rice wasn't invented until mid 19th century so
we're too early for white rice. Next it says: and dry it before the fire. So I
guess I'd better drain it and spread it out on a cloth and then dry it in front
of the fire. It's hot enough here in Australia that I think it would just dry
in the sun but let's go with the recipe. Then beat it very fine in a mortar ... the
thing that strikes me about these two hundred year old recipes is just how
much work everything was! Basically here we're just making some rice flour which
now the recipe would just say: add a couple of tablespoons of rice flour and
would just go to the cupboard and get it but then they had to wash the rice dry
the rice and grind it themselves and rice is so hard to grind ... so even though
I'm pounding it, not much is happening. Next it says to sift through a lawn sieve.
A quick search on the internet for lawn sieve and on etsy there's an 1800s
round sieve made with leather with holes in the bottom and a wood circle around
the outside. Then from my research next they went to plaited horsehair and it
wasn't until the 1900s that they started to use wire. Well all I've got is a wire
sieve of course it's pretty fine so not much is getting through so I guess I'll
just have to keep pounding away at the lumps that are left. 30 minutes later and
the fourth time through the sieve and I still don't have it all small enough to go
through but I think I'm either really bad at using a mortar and pestle or
their sieve was not as fine as mine and it'll be a little lumpy if I tip this in ...
the bits that are left or about the size of large sugar grains so I'm just going
to tip them in and see how we go. Look how brown what we ground first was
that's what's right down the bottom compared to what we ground at the end.
That shows you all the brown part of the rice that got ground off first that's
the bit with all the B vitamins and the nutrients in it that's the bit that we
don't get when we get white rice to eat. When white rice was first introduced it
caused widespread vitamin b1 deficiency across Asia with lots of people getting
berry berry so now they tend to fortify the white rice but you're still not
getting all the nutrients you'd get with brown. Put it into a saucepan just wet it
with milk and when it is thoroughly moistened add to it another pint of milk.
Set the whole over a stove or a very slow fire and take care to keep it always
moving. It's summer here in Australia and we have a total fire ban which means I
cannot light a fire so I'll have to use my stovetop which is actually quite a
relief can you imagine having to light a fire to cook this and every little thing
that you want to bake. Put in a little ginger and candied lemon peel grated.
Keep it over the fire till it is almost come to the thickness of a fine paste.
I couldn't get candied lemon peel so I'm using grated lemon rind and a little bit
of sugar instead. This is taking forever to thicken
I mean it's slightly thickened but I definitely wouldn't call it a paste.
These white fritters are something I would not want to make again unless they
taste amazing because they're sure taking a very very long time to make.
Thanks by the way to everyone who tweeted the hashtag #saveYouTubebaking
to @TeamYouTube ... there are lots of other genres of creators like the how-to
creators and beauty creators and craft creators who were also getting involved
in tweeting the video saying that they were experiencing the same problem with
content farms like 5-minute crafts gobbling up all the views so they just
can't stay on the platform unless they can somehow get more views so let
me know if @TeamYouTube replied to any of your tweets I'd love to know if
they were listening if this is a two-way conversation that would be awesome. Two
hours later and we have a paste yay! I don't want to see these white fritters
ever again so long! Now it says: when it is quite cold spread it out with a
rolling pin and cut it into little pieces taking care that they do not
stick to each other. This is so sticky it is going to need a lot of flour to make
it not stick to each other so I'm gonna roll it out and I'm not sure what shape
we're supposed to cut them into it just said cut into little pieces so I'll do
some stars but then it says: flour your hands and roll up your fritters
handsomely and fry them. Does that mean roll them into a ball? It's so sticky
it's sticking to my hands or does that mean cut circles and roll them into a
handsome shape? what does it handsome shape look like? This makes you realise
how much we rely on having pictures in cookbooks ...I have no idea what they mean
by what's written here. Anyway let's fry all of these and see which one works the
best. So we have the stars, some spheres and the handsomely rolled ones they
don't look that handsome once they're cooked. The balls look the best but let's
cut that open ... they feel a bit soft yep look they're not cooked in the middle
perhaps they're supposed to be shallow fried they don't really go crisp when
they're shallow fried though so I'm not quite sure how they were supposed to be
done. When done strewn on them some sugar.
Well I wouldn't spend half a day making those again hopefully
the next two-hundred-year-old fritter is a lot more impressive and not quite so
underwhelming. Custard fritters they sound good they've got batter on the
outside custard in the middle mm-hmm. Beat up the yolks of eight eggs with one
spoon of flour and half a nutmeg. Add in the flour now to grate half a nutmeg. If
you've ever wondered what this weird rough side on the grater is for it's for
hard spices like a nutmeg so you can grate them. I love the smell of nutmeg so
good. Whenever I use this mini grater people ask me where I got it from and
I've had it for so long that I can't even remember I'm really sorry. look at
the pattern side of this nutmeg isn't that cool and that gives you your spice.
so we can add in that nutmeg and then it says: add a little salt and a glass of
brandy and a pint of cream sweeten it and bake it in a small dish. it doesn't
say how much sugar to add so I'm gonna put in four tablespoons and then bake it
in a small dish... well I think we might bake it in the dish it's in because it
fits well in there and it's already pretty deep. it doesn't say to do this
but usually when you bake a custard you put it in a water bath coming halfway up
the sides to stop it from overheating and splitting. While that's baking let's move
on to fritters royal. Put a quart of new milk into a saucepan. They did not have
refrigerators back then so new milk is the best way to have it one fresh and two
also have the cream mixed through. if you leave fresh milk that's just been milked
from a cow or a goat or anything else the cream settles to the top of it so
you end up with like skim milk at the bottom. when it begins to boil pour in a
pint of sack or wine ... isn't that just gonna curdle the milk? yes it did!
oh I hope that was supposed to happen! what does it say next? Then take it off
the heat let it and for five or six minutes skim off the
curd and put it into a basin, can you see how that is curdled it looks gross to me
but it's obviously what was supposed to happen so let's scoop out the curds like
it says... then it says beat it up well with six eggs and season with nutmeg.
They like their nutmeg in their fritter recipes. You don't see many recipes
with nutmeg in it nowadays apart from Gingerbread. then beat it with a whisk
and add flour sufficient to give it the usual thickness of batter put in some
sugar and fry them quick. I don't actually know how big these should be.
I'll start with an ice cream scoop size and see how they go. well they look nice
and golden but they are not cooked in the center so I'll have to try smaller
ones ...you might notice that I have foil at the bottom of the basket and that's
because otherwise the liquid batter would go through the basket when it
sinks to the bottom and stick to it and then it's not going to come back up to
the top. these Fritters Royal have an unusual texture I guess you'd kind of
call it a bit rubbery even, definitely not my favourite next on the list is
Apple Fritters they sound more like something we'd have today, so let's try
them and then we'll do the custard ones at the end. take some of the largest
apples you can get pare and core them and cut them into round slices - to pare
something is to take the skin off it so we just call that peel and core the
apples now. So pare and core them and then cut them into round slices. so we'll
just cut that one up there we go. take half a pint of ale and two eggs and
beat in as much flour as will make it rather together nor common pudding. It
would be great if they'd actually put in quantities of flour for these recipes
because I'm not really familiar with what the consistency of a common pudding
was back in the 1800s so I'm just going to have to guess. Add nutmeg
and sugar to your taste... again with a nutmeg every fritter has nutmeg so far.
let it stand for three or four minutes to rise. Dip your slices of apple into
the batter fry them crisp and serve them up with sugar grated over them. These
apple fritters were delicious! they're not too hard to make so skip on the
first two and give these two hundred-year-old apple fritters a go. Now
let's see what happens with the custard ones ... it says dip them into a batter made
of half a pint of cream a quarter of a pint of milk 4 eggs a little flour and a
little grated ginger. After adding 2 cups of flour you end up with a nice batter
consistency like this. Now it says to cut this baked custard into quarters and dip
it in the batter and then fry it. But they would be huge chunks if I just did
them in quarters so I'm going to try doing it in eighths. it's actually quite
hard to get it out and if I show you here the the texture of it it's quite
soft so I'm not sure how it's going to go and I put it in the batter but we'll
give it a try. Cover it up with the batter and then lift it up out... that
seems to be holding its shape quite well. now we'll drop it in ... look at that! This
one doesn't seem to brown as quickly as the others because there's no sugar in
the actual batter I guess because the custard in the middle will be quite
sweet. Let's see what it looks like inside mmm hot custard. but it looks to
me like that custard has split with the heat of being fried. I think some of our
modern custard recipes would stand up better to being fried but the batter on
those custard fritters is actually really lovely I think I'll use the
batter again maybe on some apple fritters or something else. What do you
like to have battered and fried? what would you try this batter on? Let me know
in the comments. With thanks to all my patrons
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other two hundred year old recipes here for chocolate and here for clever or
never. Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday :)