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Potato Rechauffe
Beat up two eggs well and add to them three-quarters of a pint of milk and a seasoning of salt and pepper. Have ready a buttered fireproof dish, and put into this a layer of cold sliced potatoes; sprinkle them with grated cheese and salt, and pour over them two tablespoons of the eggs and milk; repeat these layers till the dish is full, finishing with the grated cheese; then bake in a moderate oven for half an hour and serve in the dish in which it is cooked.
— Miss Mary Britt
A layered potato gratin bound with a plain egg custard, built from leftovers. Nothing here is difficult; the only things that need translating are the vessel, the oven, and the fact that the custard has to reach the bottom of the dish.
- Three-quarters of a pintIn American measure that is 12 fl oz, or 1½ cups of milk, whisked with the two eggs. If the book is following British measure the pint is 20 oz, giving 15 fl oz — either amount works, since the custard only has to come level with the top layer.
- A moderate oven350F. Half an hour is right for a shallow dish; a deep one holding six or more layers will want 40-50 minutes, until the custard is set at the centre and no longer sloshes when the dish is nudged.
- Fireproof dishAn ovenproof earthenware or glass baking dish, roughly 8 by 8 inches or a 9-inch round. Butter it well: there is no starch or flour in the binding, and the custard will grip bare ceramic.
- Two tablespoons per layerThe recipe gives two tablespoons over each layer, which with three-quarters of a pint implies a good many thin layers. If custard is left over once the dish is filled, it does no harm to add it until the liquid rises just below the top layer of potato; otherwise the lower slices can bake dry while the top browns.
- The potatoesCold cooked potatoes — boiled or steamed the day before — sliced about ¼ inch thick. Raw potato will not soften in half an hour at this temperature. Waxy varieties hold their shape; a floury baking potato will slump into something closer to a purée, which is not unpleasant but is a different dish.
- The cheeseThe recipe says only "grated cheese," which in this period usually meant a dry grating cheese such as aged Cheddar. Be sparing with the added salt, since the cheese carries most of it and the custard is already seasoned.
- RestingLet it stand ten minutes out of the oven. An egg custard this lean firms up considerably as it cools, and cut portions hold together instead of weeping.
- YieldFour as a supper dish, six or eight alongside a roast.
Réchauffé is simply French for reheated, and in Anglo-American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century it became the polite word for a made-over dish — a way of putting yesterday's cold potatoes, mutton or fish back on the table under a name that did not announce them as leftovers. Whole chapters were given to the subject, and compilers collected such receipts eagerly, since thrift was a domestic virtue with a literature of its own. The technique here — sliced starch, grated cheese, an egg-and-milk custard poured between the layers — belongs to the wide family of potato gratins, and the recipe ends with the direction to serve it in the dish it was cooked in.