Peel and grate 4 raw potatoes; mix with 1 ounce of butter, 1 ounce of bread-crumbs, ¼ pint of milk, 1 large tablespoonful of Swiss cheese, the yolks of three eggs and the whites beaten stiff. Season with salt and pepper and mix with 1 tablespoonful of flour to a smooth batter; then fry in hot lard until brown. Serve hot.
A rösti-adjacent batter cake, lightened with beaten egg white. It comes together quickly, but grated raw potato waits for no one.
- Work fast, or the potato greysGrated raw potato oxidises within minutes and weeps water. Have the butter, crumbs, milk, cheese and yolks measured before you touch the grater, and fry as soon as the whites are folded in.
- Squeeze the potatoFour medium potatoes will shed several tablespoons of liquid, which the recipe does not account for. Wring the gratings in a towel before mixing or the batter will be loose and the cakes will steam rather than brown.
- The quarter pintDepending on whether the compiler was working in British or American measure this is 5 fl oz or 4 fl oz. Start with 4 fl oz (½ cup); the batter should mound on a spoon, not pour.
- Swiss cheeseTo a period writer this meant Emmental or Gruyere, not the mild pre-sliced supermarket product. Gruyere is the better choice here: it melts smoothly and has the salt to carry the dish. One large tablespoonful grated is roughly 1/3 oz.
- Folding the whitesThree whites beaten stiff into a stiff potato mixture will deflate unless you slacken the base first with a spoonful of the whites, then fold the rest in two additions.
- Frying mediumLard works and gives good flavour; clarified butter or a neutral oil are fine substitutes. Keep the fat at about 350F, roughly ⅛ inch deep, and cook the cakes three to four minutes a side. Raw potato needs that time to cook through, so resist a hotter pan.
- YieldAbout eight cakes of 3 inches, serving three or four as a supper dish or side. Hold finished cakes on a rack in a 200F oven rather than stacking them on a plate, which softens the crust.
Grated potato fried in fat is the backbone of Swiss farmhouse cooking, best known as rösti, generally traced to the German-speaking cantons where it began as a breakfast for farm workers. In this version the eggs, milk, crumbs and folded whites turn a plain potato cake into something closer to a French soufflé fritter. The book's format, one dish a day from a different country, belongs to a moment when middle-class households were being encouraged to think of dinner as a form of travel, and "Swiss cheese" as a category unto itself rather than the name of two or three quite different mountain cheeses.