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POTATOES, STEWED (a la Francaise)
Wash eight or nine large potatoes in two or three waters. Drain them, and put them into a saucepan with barely enough water to cover them, and let them simmer gently till they are half cooked. Peel them, and let them lie till they are almost cold; then cut them into slices half an inch thick. Melt an ounce of fresh butter in a saucepan, and mix half an ounce of flour smoothly with it. Add gradually three-quarters of a pint of boiling stock, four small onions finely shredded, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a little pepper and salt. Simmer the sauce gently until the onion is quite soft. Put in the sliced potatoes, let them simmer gently until done enough, and serve in a hot dish with the sauce poured over them. Time to simmer the potatoes by themselves, a few minutes; in the sauce, ten minutes. Probable cost, 9d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain velouté with parboiled potatoes finished in it — the sort of dish designed to reheat yesterday's boiled potatoes without their falling apart. Two details govern the result: the potatoes must be underdone and thoroughly cold before slicing, and the onion must be soft before they go in.
- The hinge: cool the potatoesHalf-cooking, then letting the potatoes go almost cold, firms the starch so the half-inch slices hold their shape in the sauce. Slicing them warm gives you a pan of broken pieces and a gluey sauce.
- Choose a waxy potatoThe recipe assumes a variety that stays intact; use Yukon Gold, Charlotte or another waxy or all-purpose potato. Russets and other floury bakers will collapse during the ten minutes in the sauce.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz — a little under 2 cups. With 1 oz butter and ½ oz flour (about 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour) the sauce is deliberately thin, a coating liquid rather than a gravy.
- StockThe stock intended here is a light meat or bone broth, often only lightly seasoned. Use a low-sodium chicken or vegetable stock and season at the end, since the sauce reduces slightly while the onion softens.
- Onions"Four small onions finely shredded" means small onions cut into fine shreds rather than diced — roughly one to two medium onions in total. Simmer until genuinely soft, eight to ten minutes; the recipe is explicit that the onion must be quite soft before the potatoes go in.
- "Till done enough"The ten minutes given is a guide. Test with the point of a knife: the slices should yield without resistance but still hold together.
- Yield and costFour or five as a side dish. The 9d is the book's own household reckoning and has no modern equivalent worth quoting.
Stewed potatoes "à la française" belong to a family of Victorian recipes that dressed cheap vegetables in a small quantity of butter, flour and stock.