Home › Vegetables › French Fried Potatoes
French Fried Potatoes
Pare six good-sized potatoes and throw them into cold water. Then with a potato scoop, scoop out into little round balls. This scoop may be purchased at a hardware store for twenty-five cents. Throw these balls into boiling
The text breaks off mid-sentence, so the frying itself is missing; what survives is the shaping method, which is the part that dates the recipe. Read it as instructions for pommes parisienne — potato balls — rather than for the fried sticks the modern name implies.
- The potato scoopWhat the book calls a potato scoop is what a modern kitchen shop sells as a melon baller, ideally in a 1-inch or 1 1/4-inch size. The twenty-five-cent price is a good marker of the period; the tool itself has not changed.
- Cold water firstParing the potatoes into cold water keeps cut surfaces from oxidizing grey before they are shaped. Keep the scooped balls submerged too, until the moment they go into the fat.
- The instruction that was cut offThe sentence ends at "throw these balls into boiling" — boiling fat and boiling water are both possible endings. Some contemporary recipes blanched the balls briefly in boiling salted water, drained them, then fried; the fragment does not settle which was meant.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. Balls of this size are usually fried at around 375F and take roughly four to five minutes to colour through.
- Dry themPotato that has sat in water must be blotted thoroughly on a towel before it meets hot fat, or it will spit and the fat can boil up.
- Potato choiceA dry, floury potato — russet or similar — gives the fluffiest interior. Waxy varieties hold their shape well but stay dense inside.
- The trimmingsScooping six potatoes into balls leaves a large proportion of the flesh behind. Keep the scraps in water and use them the same day for mashed potatoes or soup.
- YieldSix good-sized potatoes scooped at 1 inch give roughly four servings as a garnish or side.
"French fried" in American cookbooks of this era often meant simply cooked in deep fat, not cut into any particular shape han the batons than the batons now understood by the name; the origin of the phrase itself is disputed. Potatoes turned into small spheres are the classic pommes parisienne of French professional cookery, a garnish shape valued because it browns evenly and looks deliberate on a plate. The aside about buying the scoop at a hardware store for twenty-five cents is characteristic of turn-of-the-century domestic manuals.