Home › Vegetables › Potatoes A L'Anglaise
Potatoes A L'Anglaise
Boil some potatoes very dry; mash until perfectly smooth, season well with salt and pepper, warm them with an ounce of butter to every pound of potatoes, and a few spoonfuls of thick cream ; let them cool a little; roll into balls, sprinkle over them some crushed vermicelli or macaroni, and fry them a light brown.
A straightforward croquette in all but name: dry mash, enriched, chilled, rolled in crushed pasta and fried. The dry mash is what makes or breaks it.
- Dry means dryDrain the boiled potatoes and return them to the hot dry pan for a minute or two to drive off steam before mashing. Wet mash absorbs frying oil and the balls slump apart.
- Ratio and quantityAn ounce of butter per pound of potatoes is about 2 tablespoons per 450 g. "A few spoonfuls of thick cream" is left unmeasured; a few tablespoons of heavy cream is enough to smooth the mash without loosening it.
- Choose a floury potatoRussets or Maris Piper mash dry and fluffy. Waxy new potatoes turn gluey under the masher and will not hold a ball.
- Chill properly"Let them cool a little" understates it. Spread the mash on a tray and refrigerate until cold and firm, at least an hour, before shaping; warm mash cannot be rolled or coated cleanly.
- Crushed vermicelli or macaroniUncooked dry pasta, broken small — vermicelli nests crush easily in a bag with a rolling pin. It gives a spiky, crackling crust rather than the smooth shell of breadcrumbs. Press the fragments on firmly; an egg wash, though not mentioned, helps them stick.
- FryingThe recipe says only "fry them a light brown" and gives no method or temperature; deep fat is the easiest way to colour a ball evenly. At around 350-360F the coating browns in about 2-3 minutes — the interior is already cooked, so the only job is to crisp the shell. Much hotter and the pasta scorches.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. Two pounds of potatoes will make enough walnut-sized balls to serve four to six as a side.
Nineteenth-century English and American cookery used "a l'anglaise" loosely, and here it appears to mark the potato ball as a plain domestic version of the French croquette de pommes de terre rather than anything specifically English. The technique belongs to a broader habit of reshaping leftovers into something presentable: mashed potato bound with butter and cream, chilled to firmness, coated and fried was a familiar professional preparation that also appears in household manuals of the period. The pasta coating is the detail worth noticing — crushed vermicelli appears in period cookery as an alternative to breadcrumbs for coating croquettes and cutlets, browning into visible spikes.