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Potatoes A La Parisienne
Wash and rub new potatoes with a coarse cloth (avoid scraping if possible), drop into boiling water, boil briskly until done, taking care not to over do (if doubtful on this point press one of the potatoes with a fork against the side of the sauce-pan, if done it will yield to a gentle pressure). Have ready, in a sauce-pan, some cream and butter hot, but not boiling, a little green parsley, pepper and salt; pour off the water from the potatoes and add the cream and butter, let stand a minute or two over hot water, and serve. POTATO SOUFFLÉ Boil four good-sized mealy potatoes, pass them through a sieve; scald in a clean sauce-pan half tea-cup of sweet milk and tablespoon of good butter, add to the potato with a little salt and pepper, and beat to a cream; add one at a time, the yolks of four eggs, beating thoroughly, drop a small pinch of salt into the whites and beat them to a stiff froth, add them to the mixture, beating as little as possible; have ready a well-buttered baking-dish, large enough to permit the soufflé to rise without running over; bake twenty minutes in a brisk oven, serve at once, and in the same dish in which it was baked. It should be eaten with meats that have gravies.
Two dishes share this page: a simple buttered new-potato dish and a potato soufflé. Both hinge on handling the potato as little and as gently as possible.
- "Brisk oven"For the soufflé, read this as roughly 400-425F, the usual modern reading of a brisk oven. Twenty minutes suits a shallow dish; a deeper one will need longer, until the top is set and browned.
- The tea-cupBuckeye Cookery's tea-cup is smaller than a modern measuring cup, so half a tea-cup of milk is likely somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup; start with 1/4 cup and add more only if the riced potato is stiff enough to resist beating.
- "Mealy" potatoesThis means a high-starch variety - russet or an older floury type - not a waxy boiling potato. Waxy flesh turns gluey when sieved and the soufflé will be dense.
- Pass through a sieveA ricer or food mill does this faster and with less risk. Never use a food processor or blender on cooked potato; the blades rupture the starch cells and produce paste.
- Dry the potatoes firstFor the soufflé, return the drained boiled potatoes to the dry pan over low heat for a minute to steam off surface water before ricing. Wet potato dilutes the egg and the soufflé weeps.
- Folding the whitesThe instruction to beat "as little as possible" is the hinge of the whole dish. Fold in a third of the whites to slacken the base, then fold the rest through in two additions with a spatula, stopping while a few streaks remain.
- The Parisienne potatoes"Let stand a minute or two over hot water" means a bain-marie - the pan of potatoes set over, not in, simmering water. Cream and butter held over direct heat will break or reduce to grease.
- New potatoesThe scrubbing with a coarse cloth is to keep the skins on and intact. Choose potatoes of matching size so they finish together, and salt the boiling water; the recipe does not say to, but unsalted new potatoes taste flat under cream.
- YieldThe soufflé from four potatoes and four eggs serves about four as a side. It must go to the table straight from the oven, as it begins to fall soon after it leaves the heat.
The name signals ambition rather than a specific Parisian origin; American cookbooks of the period attached French tags such as "à la Parisienne" to dishes finished with cream and butter, borrowing prestige from French restaurant cooking. Buckeye Cookery, compiled in Ohio in the 1870s from contributions by practical housekeepers, often pairs a plainly treated vegetable with a company version built on eggs. The potato soufflé is the more telling of the pair. It calls for four eggs separated and beaten by hand, an oven whose heat could only be judged by feel, and service in the baking dish in which it was cooked. The closing note that it "should be eaten with meats that have gravies" is the kind of guidance that assumed a reader who knew how to cook but was still learning how to compose a meal.