What We're Cooking: Cyuele -- Almond Fritters
Submittor: Lady Adelaide Wanderer
Source: Take a Thousand Eggs or More p.309 by Cindy Renfrew
THE RECIPE Unredeacted:
Nym almandes, sugur & salt, payn de mayn, & bray hem in a morter/ do therto eyren, frie hit in oylle or in grese, cast theron sugur, & gif hit forth
Here are my notes of what I did on the day:
INGREDIENTS: 1st try:
  • 1/2 pound of almonds (1 part volume)
  • 1 part sugar
  • 1 part breadcrumbs
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 3 eggs
THE RECIPE Redeacted:
  1. Ground all but eggs in the food processor until it was a course powder.
  2. Dumped mixture into bowl and stirred in eggs.
  3. The batter was the consistency of thick pancake batter.
  4. Fried it in a skillet like pancakes in about 1/8" deep oil.
  5. Pancakes did not stay together enough to turn them.
  6. They cooked up as VERY tasty crumbles as evidenced by the moans and sighs of approval from the crowd.
    (Some even said they could be the long awaited cure for PMS.)
  7. I waited about 1 hour to see if the bread crumbs would soak up some of the liquid, but it was still thin.
  8. I added more bread crumbs to make a matzo ball batter consistency.
  9. They stayed together a bit better, but still fell apart and burnt quickly.
  10. Maybe there is too much sugar and not not enough almonds in the mix.
INGREDIENTS: 2nd try:
  • 1/2 pound of almonds
  • 2 handfuls of sugar (about 3/8 cup)
  • 3 handfuls of bread crumbs (about 1/2 cup)
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 2 eggs
THE RECIPE Redeacted:
  1. I ground it as before and added eggs as before.
  2. This time the batter was the consistency of wet sand.
  3. You had to squeeze it to get it to stay together.
  4. I formed them into 2"diameter patties 3/8" thick and fried them in a skillet as before.
  5. These were MUCH easier to cook and kept their shape.
  6. They were not quite as sweet, but everyone agreed they were just as yummy.

Called “crack for fighters”, she made two batches. The first batch came out crumbly because she believed she added too much sugar, and when she fried them, the sugar melted and the fritters didn’t stay together. She had originally put things together in equal amounts. However the bits that did cook came out excellent. Someone suggested the bits could be combined with raisins, dried cranberries and other dried fruit to make a “trail mix”. We drooled at the thought.