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Potato Chips
Potato chips are simply potatoes cut up when raw into little cubes or thin shavings, then fried. They, of course cook very quickly. They should be removed from the frying-oil immediately they begin to turn colour.
A note rather than a formula: no quantities, no temperature, no time. What it does give is the one thing that matters, which is when to lift the potatoes out.
- The hinge: pull them early"Immediately they begin to turn colour" is sound. The pieces go on colouring in their own residual heat after they leave the fat, so shavings lifted pale tend to finish gold, and ones already gold in the pan can end up darker than you want.
- Fat temperatureThe book assumes a deep pan of fat judged by eye. Use 350-375F (175-190C) for thin shavings; cubes want the lower end so the centres cook before the outsides colour. Below about 325F the potatoes soak up fat instead of crisping.
- "Frying-oil"The book says oil, though rendered fats such as beef dripping and lard were also in common use for frying at this date. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works.
- Cubes and shavings are two dishesThin shavings are crisps in the British sense and cook in a few minutes. Small cubes stay soft inside and behave more like sautéed potatoes; they need longer.
- Rinse and dryNot mentioned here, but rinsing the cut potato removes surface starch that would otherwise make the pieces stick together, and drying them thoroughly stops the fat from spitting.
- Batch sizeFry in small handfuls. A full basket drops the fat temperature sharply, which is the usual cause of limp, greasy results.
- SaltingSalt on the draining paper while still hot, not in the pan; salt in the fat shortens its useful life.
- YieldAs a rough modern guide, about one medium potato per person as a garnish or side.
The vocabulary is the interesting part: in late-Victorian Britain "chips" covered both the cube and the thin shaving, and only later did British usage settle on the thick fried baton while American usage took "chips" for the crisp wafer and "French fried" for the baton. The wafer is often traced to mid-nineteenth-century Saratoga Springs, New York, though that attribution is traditional rather than documented, and thin fried potato shavings appear in English and French cookery writing well before the story attaches to any one cook. Deep frying potatoes seems to have become a routine domestic operation only once cheap frying fat and a closed range made a large pan of hot fat manageable at home.