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POTATOES, SLICED (German way of cooking)
Dissolve two ounces of butter in a saucepan, mix one ounce of flour smoothly with it, and stir the paste until it is lightly browned. Add a table-spoonful of vinegar, a small lump of sugar, a quarter of a pint of hot stock, and a bay-leaf, and boil the sauce until it is of the consistency of cream. Slice four or five potatoes, throw them into the sauce, and let them simmer gently until tender. Serve immediately. If liked, the sauce can be flavoured with onion. Time to simmer the potatoes, ten minutes. Probable cost, 5d. Sufficient for two persons.
A browned-roux sauce sharpened with vinegar and sugar, with raw potato slices poached directly in it — essentially a hot German potato salad cooked in one pan. The main adjustment is liquid: 5 fl oz of stock will not carry five potatoes for ten minutes without catching.
- The quarter pintAn Imperial quarter pint is 5 fl oz (150 ml), not the American 4 oz. Even so, expect to add another 150–250 ml of hot stock as the potatoes cook and drink it up.
- Brown the roux properlyThe recipe wants the flour cooked in the butter until, as it says, 'lightly browned' — what German cooks call a Mehlschwitze. Stir it constantly over medium heat, a few minutes, and stop while it smells nutty, not acrid, as burnt roux cannot be rescued.
- Slice thin, or extend the timeTen minutes is only realistic for slices around 3 mm. Cut thicker and you will need 20 minutes and more stock. A waxy potato holds its shape; a floury one will break down and thicken the sauce for you, which is not unpleasant but is a different dish.
- The lump of sugarLumps cut from a sugar loaf varied in size; a modern sugar cube, about a teaspoon, is a reasonable starting point. With a tablespoon of vinegar it gives a mild sweet-sour balance; taste at the end, as vinegars vary considerably in strength. A cider or white wine vinegar suits this better than malt.
- Onion, if usingSweat the chopped onion in the butter before adding the flour, rather than stirring it in later. Half a small onion is plenty for this quantity.
- Stirring and stickingRoux-thickened sauce with starchy potatoes in it will settle and scorch on a modern thin-based pan. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat at a bare simmer, and move the slices gently so they do not break.
- FinishingFish out the bay leaf before serving. The dish thickens further as it stands, so loosen it with a splash of hot stock if it sits at all.
- YieldTwo, as stated. Judge by weight rather than by count: about 500 g of potatoes.
Cassell's is arranged alphabetically by ingredient, so a German potato preparation appears simply as one variant among dozens under POTATOES rather than under its country. What is described here belongs to the family of German warm potato dishes built on a Mehlschwitze — a browned butter-and-flour roux — sharpened with vinegar and softened with a little sugar, the same sweet-sour axis found in German potato salad and in braised red cabbage. Cooking the raw potato slices directly in the sauce, rather than boiling them first and dressing them, is the more economical route: nothing is poured away, and the starch released from the potatoes does part of the thickening. The costing of fivepence for two portions places it among the book's cheap everyday vegetable dishes.