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Potato Ribbons
Wash and peel half a dozen large kidney potatoes, and let them lie in cold water for a few minutes. Cut them into ribbons, round and round, like an apple, and keep the strips as nearly as possible of one width. They must not be too thin or they will break. Fry them in plenty of hot fat until they are lightly browned. Drain them on a wire sieve, and sprinkle a little pepper and salt over them. Serve on a hot dish. Time to fry, eight or ten minutes. Probable cost of potatoes, 1d. or 2d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian deep-fried potato that predates the spiral cutter by a century. The whole thing turns on the cut and on getting the strips dry before they meet the fat.
- Kidney potatoesAn older British term for the long, oval-shaped potato varieties, generally firm and waxy in flesh. Any firm, low-starch potato with a long shape works; large, evenly shaped tubers are what matter, since a knobbly one cannot be pared in a continuous strip.
- Cutting the ribbonPare round and round from the outside inward as you would peel an apple, using a swivel peeler or a sharp knife held flat. The recipe only says they must not be too thin or they will break; something around 1/8 inch is a workable thickness.
- Dry them firstThe cold-water soak washes off surface starch so the ribbons do not glue together, but wet potato in hot fat spits and steams. Pat them thoroughly dry in a towel before frying; this is the step the original assumes and does not state.
- Fat temperature"Plenty of hot fat" means deep enough to float the strips. The book gives no temperature; a moderate frying heat, somewhere around 340-350F, suits the long cooking time, since hotter fat colours the outside before the inside dries. Dripping or lard would have been the likely fats; a neutral oil behaves the same.
- Eight to ten minutesFry in small batches, since crowding drops the fat temperature and gives limp, greasy ribbons; six potatoes will need several loads.
- Draining and seasoningA wire sieve is a cooling rack or a wire skimmer over paper. Salt the moment they leave the fat, while the surface is still hot enough to take it; salt applied to cooled ribbons slides off.
- YieldSix large potatoes for three or four people as a side dish, and they must go to table at once. Potato ribbons soften within minutes and do not reheat.
Cassell's places this among its basic potato treatments — chipped, straw and shaved potatoes are all found in British books of the period, and the cut is often said to follow French practice and the pommes frites of Parisian cooks. The ribbon cut belongs to the same decorative impulse that produced potato baskets, straws and game chips: a cheap vegetable made to look like a garnish worth serving. The costing — a penny or twopence a pound — is a reminder of who the book was written for, a household stretching a very inexpensive ingredient into something with presence on the dish. Kidney potatoes have firm, waxy flesh that holds together under the knife instead of crumbling.