Cream Fritters Recipe from 1923

This is an interesting dessert from the 1920s, from a church recipe book called Reliable Recipes (see all recipes from this book here). It looks like it’d be fairly fast to make, though you do have to wait a bit for it to set up before frying the fritters. Would be good to have it prepped before dinner, and then fry it right before eating.

Here’s the original recipe text:

CREAM FRITTERS
1 pint milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons corn-starch
1 large tablespoon flour
Yolks of 4 eggs
14 cup sweet cream
Pinch of cinnamon

Warm the milk in the double boiler. Mix the other ingredients. Pour the boiling milk into the mixture. Strain
and boil fifteen minutes, stirring all the time. Flavor with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Pour in buttered pans about 1 inch thick. Set away to cool. When firm cut in squares, roll in egg and bread crumbs, and fry in deep fat.

And here’s the updated/organized version:

Cream Fritters

Print Recipe

Equipment

• Double boiler
• Mixing bowl
• Strainer
• Square pans
• Frying pan or deep fryer

Ingredients

• 1 pint milk
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 tbsp corn-starch
• 1 tbsp flour
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 egg beaten
• ¼ cup sweet cream
• pinch of cinnamon
• ½ tsp vanilla
• bread crumbs
• butter for buttering the pans
• deep fat for frying the fritters

Instructions

• Warm the milk in a double boiler.
• Mix the sugar, corn-starch, flour, yolks of the eggs, sweet cream, and a pinch of cinnamon in a bowl.
• Pour the boiling milk into the mixture, then strain and boil for fifteen minutes, stirring constantly. Flavor with vanilla.
• Pour the mixture into buttered pans about 1 inch thick. Set aside to cool.
• Once firm, cut into squares, roll in egg and bread crumbs, and fry in deep fat.

Recipe Notes

Milk

There’s often a disconnect between old recipes and what they assume is standard knowledge, and our modern “standard knowledge.” For instance, this recipe calls for milk– but what kind? 1%, 2%, whole? Something else?

I found this great discussion about which milk was used in 100 year old recipes on AHundredYearsAgo.com. Basically, for most recipes it doesn’t matter and whatever you use will still make a perfectly good final product.

Personally, I use whole milk as that’s my favorite.

Bread Crumbs

Like the milk, I’m guessing that originally these would be bread crumbs from a homemade loaf of brown bread, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the bother of getting boutique bread crumbs for these fritters versus just using something you already have.

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*Featured image is an AI rendering of the recipe, made with Ideogram.