Apple Fritters (Rumpolt)

This was cooked as the dessert-category entry in the Feuerprobe / Trial by Fire 2019 competition at Festival of Elvegast.

The Sources

Rumpolt offers several closely related fritter recipes; the two I worked from are Zugemüß 38 and Zugemüß 42.

Zugemüß 38: “Epffel rundt vnd dünn schnitten / mach ein Teig dazu mit Wein / back die Epffel darauß / wenn du sie in heisse Butter wirffst / so werden sie fein aufflauffen / gibs warm auff ein Tisch / vnd besträw es mit weissem Zucker / so ist es auch gut.”

“Cut apples round and thin / make a dough with wine / fry the apples in it / when you throw them in hot butter / they will rise nicely / give it warm on the table / and sprinkle them with white sugar / like this it is also good.”

Zugemüß 42: “Schneidt Epffel zimlich grob / vnd mach ein Teig dazu zimlich dick mit Wein / thu die Epffel darein / vnd rür sie wol durcheinander / dz der Teig die Epffel durchgehet. Nim darnach ein Pfannen mit Butter / mach sie heiß / vnd zeuch die Epffel hinein mit dem Teig / vnd zeuchs nicht auff ein hauffen / daß die Butter durchauß kan kommen / backs geschwindt auß / vnd kehrs offt vmb / so wirt es schön vnd lieblich. Gibs warm auff ein Tisch / vnd besträw es mit weissem Zucker. Also bäckt man die Strauben von Epffeln.”

“Slice apples quite coarsely / and mix a batter for it quite thick with wine / put the apples in it / and stir them well together / that the batter goes through the apples. Then take a pan with butter / make it hot / and toss the apples in with the dough / and don’t throw them in a pile / so that the butter can come throughout / fry swiftly and turn often / like this it becomes beautiful and lovely. Give it warm to the table / and sprinkle it with white sugar. Thus one fries the Strauben of apples.”

Discussion

The two recipes look at first like duplicates with slightly different apple thickness and slightly more detail in the second. The clue that they aren’t quite the same is in Zugemüß 42’s last sentence: “Also bäckt man die Strauben von Epffeln” — “thus one fries the Strauben of apples.” Strauben specifically refers to fritters made from a yeasted dough, and modernly the word survives as the name for funnel cakes. This means, to me, that the dough Rumpolt is describing in 42 is not a simple wine-and-flour batter; it is a yeast-raised dough that has been thinned to batter consistency with wine and gets its rise from both the yeast and the steam when it hits hot fat.

I built the batter around sourdough starter to push toward a true yeast-doughnut effect rather than the modern dropped-batter apple fritter. The starter provides flavor notes that a yeast-only batter wouldn’t, but if you don’t have starter going, a small amount of active dry yeast (about 1 tsp) bloomed in warm water with a pinch of sugar will get you close. Note the absence of cinnamon or any other warm spice in either Rumpolt recipe — the dish is just sweetened with white sugar at service. I resisted the urge to add cinnamon, since both fritter recipes and the related dessert recipes elsewhere in Rumpolt are consistent on sugar-only finishing.

The “beautiful and lovely” outcome Rumpolt describes in Zugemüß 42 is fritters that are properly coated rather than piled together — each apple chunk individually battered, the frying medium reaching every surface, turned often and cooked to “golden brown and delicious”. From kitchenware descriptions and parallel recipes, these were fried in iron pans deep enough for a few inches of fat, which is essentially modern deep-frying. The butter was clarified before storage, which raises its smoke point to a workable frying temperature. The instruction that “not many should be fried at once” is important— crowding drops the fat temperature, and the result is greasy fritters with pale undercrust instead of deep golden shells.

Bibliography