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Ragout of Potatoes
6 potatoes, 6 leeks, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1 tablespoonful of chopped Chervil, 12 stalks of asparagus, ½ pint of milk, Salt and pepper to taste.
Cut the potatoes in dice, throw them into boiling water, add the leeks cut into slices. Boil ten minutes and drain. At the same time boil and drain the asparagus, but in a separate kettle. Now mix the two together. Put the butter in a saucepan, add the milk and Chervil, salt and pepper, stir carefully over the fire until scalding hot. Pour it over the potatoes, bring to boiling point and serve.
A thin, milk-bound vegetable stew rather than a braise. The whole point is that the potatoes and asparagus stay in recognisable pieces, so the timing at each stage is short.
- Cut the potatoes small and evenDice of about half an inch will be tender in the ten minutes given; larger pieces will not, and the recipe offers no second chance at the potatoes once the milk goes in. Waxy varieties hold their edges; floury ones will start to break down and cloud the milk.
- Six leeks is a lotTwo or three large modern leeks, white and pale green only, sliced thin, will match the intent; leeks sold today are often thicker than the recipe seems to assume. Wash the slices thoroughly after cutting, since grit lodges between the layers.
- The milk quantityA pint and a half is three cups by American measure, nearer three and three-quarters if the pint intended is imperial. Either way it is a generous amount of liquid for six potatoes, and the dish will come out soupy — closer to a chowder than a ragout. Two cups gives a coating sauce; the choice is yours, but there is no flour here to thicken it.
- Scalding, not boiling, the milkBring the milk and butter just to the point where it steams and shivers at the edge. Milk held at a true boil will catch on the pan bottom and taste scorched, and the finished dish is reheated to boiling point anyway.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh and it loses everything when dried. If you cannot find it, use flat-leaf parsley with a small amount of tarragon or fresh fennel frond to suggest the anise note. Add it off the heat, as chervil's flavour is fugitive.
- Asparagus timingThe recipe implies asparagus boils as long as the potatoes. Modern spears want three to five minutes at most, trimmed of woody ends and cut into inch lengths. Drain them and hold aside; folding them in at the end keeps them green.
- Season at the endSalt goes into the milk here, but the vegetables were boiled in unsalted water and will dilute it. Taste after combining. White pepper suits the pale colour if you have it.
- YieldSix potatoes and this much milk serve four to six as a side dish, or four as a light supper with bread.
Ragoût in French cookery simply means a dish of pieces stewed in a sauce, from ragoûter, to revive the appetite, and English cookbooks borrowed the word freely through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for anything cut up and simmered. Applied to potatoes, leeks and asparagus in a milk sauce, the term marks the dish as a deliberate attempt to give vegetables the dignity of a made dish rather than a boiled accompaniment. The combination itself is a spring one: leeks from winter storage, the first asparagus, and chervil, which is among the earliest herbs to come up and was far more common in Anglo-American kitchen gardens then than it is in shops now.