Home › Savouries › Cassolettes of Potato
Cassolettes of Potato
Take the same mixture as potato croquettes (see p. 174), make it up into balls, egg and bread-crumb them, shape them into cases, cutting a lid with a pastry cutter. Fry them in very hot fat; lift off the lid, take out the soft part of the potato, fill in with chicken, oyster, game, anything of that kind which you like, put the little lids on again, and serve with fried parsley.
A hollowed, deep-fried potato case with a lid, filled at the last moment. It is a construction job more than a cooking one, and everything depends on the potato mixture being dry enough to hold its shape.
- The base mixtureThe cross-reference is to the book's potato croquette mixture on p. 174, which is not given here; such mixtures are usually of the duchesse type, floury potatoes dried off well and bound with egg yolk and a little butter. Wet mashed potato will slump in the fat and the cases will burst.
- What a cassolette isHere it means a small edible case, from the French for a little pan or covered pot. The "lid" is cut from the case itself with a pastry cutter before frying, and lifted off after; it is not a pastry top.
- ShapingForm balls, egg and crumb them, then shape into cases and cut the lid with the cutter before they go into the fat, as the recipe directs. Chilling the crumbed cases for half an hour firms the coating and stops it splitting.
- "Very hot fat"No temperature is given; in modern terms this means fat around 375F. Any cooler and the potato absorbs fat and collapses; much hotter and the crumb colours before the inside sets. Fry a test one first.
- Hollowing outDo it while hot, with a teaspoon, and leave a wall at least a quarter-inch thick. The scooped-out potato is worth keeping for the next batch.
- The fillingIt must be hot, thick and already cooked, since the cases go straight to the table. A tight veloute or bechamel bound with a little cream is the usual vehicle for diced chicken or game. If using oysters, poach them in their own liquor for a minute or two only, until the edges just ruffle; longer cooking turns them to rubber.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly on a cloth before they go anywhere near the fat, and use a spider or basket. Wet parsley in hot fat spits violently. A few seconds is enough; it should stay green.
- Yield and servingNo quantity is given. A pound of cooked potato might make eight to ten cases; allow one or two per person, and fill them only as they go out or the crisp shell softens within minutes.
The savoury was a small, hot, usually salty dish served at the end of a formal British dinner, after the sweet and before or with the dessert fruit, and it is a course that has essentially disappeared. Its purpose was to close the meal on a note that suited the wine still on the table, which is why savouries lean on anchovy, cheese, oyster, game and pungent seasoning rather than sugar. Cassolette is simply a little pot or covered dish, and by extension the small edible case that imitates one. Making a container out of the food itself was a standing preoccupation of professional cooking in this period, and the same trick appears with rice, bread, forcemeat and pastry throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian repertoire.