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Potatoes a la Creme
Boil some potatoes of a firm kind in the usual way. Take a small, sharp, thin-bladed knife and cut them into thin slices. Put 1 pint of these into a stewpan with 1 teaspoonful of salt, 1 ounce of butter, a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and a tablespoonful of lemon juice. Pour 1/4 of a pint of cream over the top, cover the saucepan closely, and shake it over the fire for eight or ten minutes. Place the potatoes on a hot dish, and be very careful not to break them.
A simple side dish that lives or dies on the potato variety and on how little you disturb it once the cream goes in. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: shake, never stirOnce the slices are in the pan, a spoon will break them down into mash. Hold the covered pan by the handle and slide it back and forth over the heat so the slices turn in the cream on their own.
- "A firm kind"This means a waxy potato — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, fingerling, or any salad potato. Russets and other floury bakers disintegrate the moment they meet the cream.
- Boil, cool slightly, then sliceBoil, let cool a little, then slice -- boiled potatoes slice more cleanly once they have stopped steaming; straight from the water they tend to crumble on the blade. Peel them first if you want an all-white dish (the recipe does not say either way).
- The pint of slicesThis is a volume measure, not a weight. Read as an imperial pint, it is about 2 1/2 cups of sliced cooked potato (a US pint would be 2 cups), which comes from something in the region of 1 to 1 1/4 lb of potatoes before boiling.
- A quarter of a pint of creamAbout 5 fl oz, or roughly 2/3 cup, if read as imperial (1/2 cup on a US pint). Use heavy cream: lower-fat creams are more likely to thin or split when acid and heat are involved.
- Salt appears twiceThe full teaspoonful plus a further "little salt" will be aggressive for 1 lb of already-boiled potatoes. Use the teaspoon or the pinch, not both, and taste before serving.
- Add the lemon juice lastThe recipe puts it in with the seasonings, before the cream. Acid can split a cream sauce, especially a lighter one, so warming the potatoes in the cream first and adding the tablespoon of lemon juice near the end of the eight to ten minutes is the safer order.
- Heat and yieldMedium-low is enough; the cream should barely bubble at the edges. Because the pan stays covered it will not reduce much, so expect a light coating rather than a thick glaze. Serves three or four as a side.