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Fried Whole Potatoes
Select small potatoes of uniform size. Wash, pare and parboil in boiling salted water ten minutes. Drain dry and fry a golden brown in deep hot Cottolene (time required about twelve minutes). Fat should not be hot enough to brown potatoes until the last five minutes of cooking, otherwise potatoes will not be cooked throughout. Drain on brown paper, sprinkle with salt and serve at once.
A two-stage fry in all but name: the potatoes are parboiled, then cooked through in warm fat before the heat is raised to brown them. Everything depends on keeping that fat below browning temperature at the start.
- CottoleneA branded shortening (cottonseed oil blended with beef suet) made by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which published this book. Any neutral high-smoke-point fat works: peanut, refined sunflower or a modern vegetable shortening.
- The hinge — fat temperatureThe recipe names no temperatures. In modern terms, start the potatoes at a moderate heat, somewhere around 300-325F, so they steam through without colouring, then raise it for the last five minutes to crisp and brown. Dropping them straight into hot fat gives a dark shell over a raw centre, which is what the original warns against.
- Potato size"Small potatoes of uniform size" suggests something around golf-ball size. Larger ones are unlikely to cook through in twelve minutes; halve or quarter them and expect them to behave differently.
- ParboilingTen minutes in salted boiling water leaves them firm at the centre, not tender. If a knife slides in easily they are overdone and will break up in the fat.
- Drain dryTake this literally. Surface water on a parboiled potato spits violently in deep fat and prevents any crust from forming. Let them steam-dry a few minutes in the colander before frying.
- Brown paperGrocery paper was the standard drain of the period. Paper towels or a wire rack over a tray do the job with less risk of ink and glue; a rack keeps the undersides crisp.
- YieldNot given. Reckon about 1.5 lb of small potatoes for four as a side, and fry in batches so the fat temperature does not crash.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was published by the N. K. Fairbank Company to promote Cottolene, its cottonseed-oil shortening, and the brand name appears wherever fat is called for — a common form of cookbook in the era, when manufacturers found that a year of menus sold a product better than an advertisement. Cottonseed oil, once a waste product of the cotton gin, had by the 1880s been refined into a cheap rival to lard, and Fairbank's marketing leaned hard on the idea that it was lighter and more digestible than animal fat. The dish itself uses the older French practice of frying potatoes in two heats, warm then hot, which is the same principle behind pommes souffl ried chip.