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French Fried Potatoes
Wash and pare small potatoes, cut in eighths lengthwise, and soak 1 hour in cold water. Take from water, dry between towels, and fry in deep Crisco. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt. To test Crisco, heat until a crumb of bread becomes a golden brown in 20 seconds.
A straightforward deep-fry, but the original leaves out the two numbers a modern cook wants: the fat temperature and the frying time.
- The bread-crumb test in degreesA crumb that browns golden in about 20 seconds indicates hot fat, somewhere in the upper end of the usual frying range; the old bread tests are rough guides only, and a thermometer does the same job with less guesswork.
- CriscoThe book was published to promote Crisco, and the shortening is named on almost every page. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works: refined peanut, sunflower, canola, or modern vegetable shortening.
- The hour in cold water is the hingeSoaking rinses surface starch so the pieces crisp rather than gluing together. Drying them thoroughly afterwards matters just as much, since wet potatoes drop the fat temperature and spit.
- TimingCut in eighths lengthwise, small potatoes take roughly 5-7 minutes at 365-375F, fried in small batches so the fat does not cool. For a crisper result, fry once at about 325F until soft and pale, rest, then finish at 375F.
- Brown paperGrocery paper of the period was unbleached and absorbent. Use paper towels, or better, a wire rack set over a tray so steam escapes and the undersides stay crisp.
- Potato choiceA starchy or all-purpose potato, russet or Maris Piper, gives a fluffy interior. Waxy new potatoes stay dense and slightly waxy inside.
- YieldFigure about one medium potato per person as a side dish; roughly 2 lb serves four. Salt the moment they leave the fat, while the surface is still oily enough to hold it.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the early twentieth century: the cookbook issued by a manufacturer to teach cooks how to use a new product. Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, was introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911 as a substitute for lard and butter, and books like this one worked to make it seem indispensable, which is why the fat is named here where an older recipe would simply have said "hot fat." The potatoes themselves are older than the brand: cutting them into strips and frying them deep is generally traced to Belgium and northern France, and English-language cookbooks were calling them "French fried" by the later nineteenth century, a phrase often said to describe the cut rather than the country, though that explanation is more folk etymology than established fact.