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Ringed Potatoes
Peel large potatoes, cut them round and round in shavings, as you pare an apple. Fry with clean, sweet lard in a frying-pan till brown, stirring so as to brown all alike, drain on a sieve, sprinkle fine salt over them, and serve.
A nineteenth-century spiral potato chip, fried in a shallow pan rather than a deep fryer. The instructions are complete as written; the only real variables are the thickness of the shavings and the temperature of the fat.
- The hinge: thin and dryPare the spiral as thin as an apple peel, no more than about 1/8 inch, or the ribbons stay soft in the middle while the edges burn. Pat the shavings dry before they meet the fat, since surface water drops the temperature and makes them limp.
- Cutting the spiralA swivel peeler will give thin ribbons but they tend to break; a sharp paring knife worked around the potato in one continuous turn is closer to what the book intends. A spiral cutter or the spiralizer attachment on a stand mixer does the same job in seconds.
- "Clean, sweet lard"Sweet here means fresh and not rancid, not sugared. Rendered lard is still sold and fries well; beef tallow, refined peanut oil or any neutral oil with a smoke point above 400F works the same way.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives none. Hold the fat at 350-365F and work in small batches, roughly two to three minutes; the recipe asks for them browned and browned evenly, so lift them a shade before the colour you want, since they darken after they leave the pan.
- "Fry in a frying-pan"Shallow frying is intended, about an inch of fat in a heavy skillet, not a full deep-fry. The recipe's own reason for stirring is to 'brown all alike'; in a shallow layer the ribbons also tend to tangle.
- DrainingA sieve was the period equivalent of a wire rack. Draining on paper works, but a rack set over a sheet pan keeps the undersides from steaming.
- SaltSalt while the ribbons are still glistening with fat or it will not adhere. Fine salt, as specified, distributes better than coarse on so thin a surface.
- YieldTwo large russets, roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb, will serve about four as a side dish. They are best within minutes of frying and do not reheat well.
Fried potato ribbons of this kind belong to the same nineteenth-century family as Saratoga chips, which are said to have appeared on American hotel and restaurant menus from the 1850s onward and had reached domestic cookbooks by the time Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Minneapolis in 1877. That the recipe specifies lard, and specifies it be clean and sweet, is a reminder that rancidity was the constant risk in a kitchen frying in rendered animal fat, not the calories.