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Fried Whole Potatoes
Peel and boil in salted water, remove from the fire as soon as done so that they may remain whole; have ready one beaten egg, and some rolled crackers or bread-crumbs; first roll the potatoes in "the egg, and then in the crackers, and fry in butter till a light brown, or drop in boiling lard. This is a nice way to cook old potatoes.
A breaded whole-potato dish that depends entirely on the boiling stage: the potatoes must be just cooked through and no further, or they collapse when handled.
- Pick small potatoesThe recipe does not specify a size, but potatoes of roughly egg size and uniform shape are the easiest to keep whole and to coat evenly; larger ones are harder to turn in the pan without breaking the crust.
- Boil short, then dryTest with a skewer from about 12 minutes and pull them the moment the point slides in with slight resistance. Drain and let them steam dry in the empty hot pan for a minute; a damp surface will shed the egg.
- Cool before coatingHot potatoes tear and the egg cooks on contact into shreds. Let them come down to warm before you roll them in the egg.
- "Rolled crackers"Crackers crushed to crumbs with a rolling pin, from a plain unsalted soda or water cracker. Dry breadcrumbs or panko do the same job; seasoned crumbs will be too salty on top of salted boiling water.
- One egg is not muchA single beaten egg coats perhaps six to eight small potatoes. Loosen it with a spoonful of water or milk so it flows rather than clings in patches, and beat a second egg if you are cooking more.
- Butter or lardButter browns fast and its milk solids will burn before the crumbs are set; keep the pan at medium and turn the potatoes often. Deep-frying in lard is the more forgiving route and gives an even shell. The recipe says only "boiling lard" and gives no temperature; in a modern pan, around 350-360F will brown the coating in a few minutes.
- "Old potatoes"Late-season storage potatoes, dried out and mealy, and often slightly sweet if they have been kept cold. The point of the recipe is to give tired stock a crisp exterior; new potatoes have their own skin and do not need it.
- YieldFigure four to five small potatoes a person as a side, and serve immediately -- the crumb coat softens within a few minutes of leaving the pan.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) is generally said to have grown out of a fundraising collection for an Ohio Methodist congregation, and it reflects a farm-household economy in which the cellar had to be eaten down before spring. The closing line, "a nice way to cook old potatoes," is the whole justification for the dish: by February a storage crop has lost moisture and, if kept cold, has begun converting starch to sugar, and boiling alone produces something watery and dull. Egg-and-crumb coating was a common American answer to a dull ingredient, adding fat, browning and crunch where none existed.