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Shredded Potatoes
Wash, pare and cut potatoes in one-eighth inch slices. Cut slices in tiny straws. Wash carefully in cold water until water ceases to be cloudy. Let stand one hour in cold water. Drain and dry on towels. Fry a golden brown in deep hot Cottolene. Drain on brown paper, sprinkle with salt and serve around fried perch.
A straightforward julienne fry, with one branded ingredient that no longer exists. The soaking and drying steps are the whole recipe.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil shortening, blended with beef suet, sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company and long since discontinued. Any neutral frying fat works: peanut, canola or refined sunflower oil, or vegetable shortening if you want the firmer texture of the original.
- Frying temperatureThe original gives none. Hold the fat at 350-360F for straws this thin; hotter and the exteriors color before the interiors cook, cooler and they absorb fat. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- The hinge: dry them completelyWet straws steam rather than crisp and make hot fat spit violently. After the hour's soak, spin or blot them until no moisture shows on the cloth, and separate the strands so they do not fry in a clump.
- Why the soak mattersThe rinsing and hour in cold water pull surface starch off the cut faces, which keeps the straws from gluing together and gives a cleaner, paler crisp. It is not a fussy Victorian flourish; skip it and you get a mat.
- Cut sizeEighth-inch slices cut into straws is roughly pommes allumettes, matchstick. A mandoline or the julienne plate of a food processor gets there faster than a knife, and evenness matters more than precision, since thin strands burn while thick ones are still raw.
- DrainingBrown paper (grocery-bag stock) was the standard blotter. Use a rack set over a sheet pan instead, which keeps the undersides from going soft, and salt the moment they leave the fat while the surface is still tacky.
- Timing and yieldTiming -- Straws this fine take about 2-3 minutes to reach golden brown. The recipe gives no quantity or yield. They lose their crispness quickly, so fry them after the perch is cooked and hold the fish, not the potatoes.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was compiled by Elizabeth O. Hiller and published as a promotional cookbook for Cottolene, the cottonseed-oil shortening marketed by the N. K. Fairbank Company as a modern, wholesome replacement for lard. That explains why a brand name appears mid-instruction where a later book would simply say "fat": the volume had a product to promote, and deep frying showed it to best advantage. The potatoes themselves are the French kitchen's pommes allumettes, matchstick potatoes. The pairing with perch may well be a Great Lakes touch: pan-sized freshwater perch are often said to have been cheap and plentiful in Chicago, where the book was produced.