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POTATOES (a la Duchesse)
This, it has been said, is "the acme of delicacy in the cooking of potatoes." Prepare some potato paste as for croquettes (See POTATO CROQUETTES). When this is cold, mould it with a very small quantity of flour into oblong or round cakes. Fry these in clarified fat, first on one side then on the other, and take them out the instant they have acquired a delicate golden-brown colour. With moderate care, potatoes thus cooked are delicious.
A cross-reference recipe: it assumes you have already made the potato paste under POTATO CROQUETTES. The whole thing hangs on that paste being dry and thoroughly cold before it goes near fat.
- What the paste isPotato croquette paste of the period is typically floury potatoes boiled or steamed, dried over heat, passed through a sieve, then bound with butter and egg yolk and seasoned with salt and pepper, sometimes nutmeg; the exact mixture is whatever Cassell's own POTATO CROQUETTES entry specifies. Use a starchy variety and drive off as much moisture as you can; a wet paste will spread in the pan.
- Cold means coldThe instruction to wait until the paste is cold is the hinge. Warm paste has no structure and the cakes collapse or split in the fat. Spread it on a tray, cover, and refrigerate at least an hour.
- "A very small quantity of flour"The flour is for handling, not for the mixture. Dust the board and your palms only; worked into the paste it turns the cakes pasty and dulls the potato flavour.
- Clarified fatClarified butter, or clarified beef or pork dripping, was used because the milk solids in whole butter scorch. Clarified butter or ghee gives the closest result; a neutral oil with a knob of butter added works but tastes plainer.
- Pan temperatureThis is shallow frying, not deep; the cakes are turned from one side to the other. The book gives no temperature. As a modern guide, fat at about 350-375F will colour the surface in two or three minutes a side. Cooler fat lets the cakes absorb grease before they set; hotter fat browns the outside before the centre heats through.
- Take them out at once"The instant they have acquired a delicate golden-brown colour" is meant literally. The interior is already cooked, so extra time in the pan only dries and toughens the crust.
- The piped versionMost modern cooks know pommes duchesse as rosettes piped from a star tube, brushed with egg and baked at about 400F until the ridges colour. Cassell's shallow-fried cakes use the same paste and give a crisper edge; which form came first is not established here.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a rough modern working, about 1 1/2 lb potatoes, two yolks and 2 oz butter would make eight to ten cakes, enough as a side for four.
Naming a dish "a la duchesse" belongs to the nineteenth-century French repertoire, where such titles marked a preparation as refined rather than commemorating any particular duchess; the label is decorative and no specific origin for it is documented. What defines the dish is the paste itself, a mash stiffened with egg yolk so it holds a shape under heat, the same base used for croquettes and for the piped borders that once ringed platters of meat and fish. The recipe demonstrates a technique rather than a single dish: master a dry, well-bound potato paste and you have croquettes, duchesse cakes, and, with choux pastry added, pommes dauphine. The quoted praise, "the acme of delicacy in the cooking of potatoes," is left unattributed in the original.