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Saratoga Potatoes
Peel four raw potatoes, and slice them with a sharp knife to the thickness of note-paper. As you slice throw them into ice-cold water, and allow them to remain until they are wanted. Dry them thoroughly in a clean cloth. Have ready a pan with plenty of boiling lard. Put in the potatoes a few slices at a time, using a frying-basket. Fry until a pale golden brown, which will only take a minute or two. Sprinkle them with salt while they are hot, and serve at once with grilled steak or chop, or other meat dish. Probable cost, 3d.
A late-Victorian recipe for what we now call the potato crisp or chip. The method is sound; only the equipment and the fat need translating.
- Thickness"The thickness of note-paper" is a figure of speech for paper-thin rather than a literal measure; real note-paper is far thinner than any sliceable potato. In practice aim for the thinnest even slice you can manage, on the order of 1-1.5 mm. A mandoline set to its thinnest usable notch gives a far more even slice than a knife, and evenness is what stops half the batch burning while the rest stays limp.
- The cold water soakThis is the hinge of the recipe. Soaking rinses off surface starch so the slices fry crisp rather than sticking together in a mass. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough; longer does no harm.
- DryingThoroughly means thoroughly. Any water left clinging will make the fat spit violently and steam the slices rather than crisping them. Blot between two towels, then leave them spread out for a few minutes.
- Fat and temperatureLard is still ideal, but any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. "Boiling lard" means about 350-375F (175-190C); at that heat the slices are done in a minute or two, as stated. Use a thermometer rather than guessing at the bubbling.
- Batch sizeA few slices at a time is not fussiness. Dumping in a large handful drops the fat temperature and the potatoes absorb oil instead of frying. Let the fat recover between batches.
- SaltingSalt the moment they leave the fat, while the surface is still slightly oily, or it will not adhere. Drain on paper or a rack first, not in a heap.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; four potatoes sliced this thin would make a side dish for roughly four. They are at their best within the hour and do not keep well once cool.
- Cost"Probable cost, 3d." is threepence in pre-decimal British currency.
Saratoga potatoes, or Saratoga chips, take their name from Saratoga Springs, New York, the fashionable spa and racing resort where the wafer-thin fried potato became a house speciality in the mid-nineteenth century; the popular story credits a cook at Moon's Lake House with inventing them in irritation at a diner who kept sending back his fried potatoes as too thick, though that tale is traditional rather than documented and appears in print well after the fact. What is certain is that by the 1870s and 1880s "Saratoga chips" had entered the English cookery canon under that American name. The recipe belongs to the moment before commercial manufacture: everything a modern crisp factory does — thin slicing, cold-water rinsing to wash off starch, thorough drying, a short fry in hot fat, salt while warm — is already set down in these few lines.