Fritule

The story

Fritule, small round fritters with rum and raisins dusted with powdered sugar, have a clear family connection across the Adriatic Sea: Venetian frittelle, the traditional fried dough of carnival season in Venice, traveled down the Dalmatian coast during the centuries of Venetian rule and in time took root as a local, Croatian treat. While in Venice frittelle are mostly tied to carnival, in Dalmatia fritule are fried year-round today — for Advent, Christmas, and Easter, but also in summer as a street sweet sold from stands. Alongside the basic batter of flour, eggs, and milk used in this recipe, cooks in Dalmatia often worked boiled potato or grated apple into the dough as well — homey additions that made fritule differ from one household to the next. For Croatian families in the diaspora, the smell of fritule frying in hot oil, the raisins crackling, is often the first and strongest sensory signal that Christmas has arrived.