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Saratoga Chips
Pare two large potatoes, cut them into very thin slices lengthwise. Throw them in cold water about one hour; less time will answer perfectly well. When ready to fry take out a few pieces at a time and dry on a soft towel. Have ready a kettle of smoking lard; put the slices in a frying basket, or you can throw them into the fat, lift and stir with a skimmer; when light brown take out, place on a soft brown paper in a colander, dredge with salt and
A straightforward potato chip, and the method still works exactly as written. The original text breaks off mid-sentence — it ends with salting and serving, nothing is missing from the technique.
- The hinge: dry the slicesWater on the potato is what makes fat spit violently and chips go limp. Blot each batch thoroughly between towels right before it goes into the fat, and fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Cold water soakAn hour is generous; twenty to thirty minutes rinses out enough surface starch to keep the slices from welding together. Change the water once if it goes cloudy.
- Slicing"Very thin" is not quantified here; something around 1/16 inch is the usual modern reading. A mandoline or the slicing side of a box grater gives the even thickness that a knife rarely will, and evenness matters more than absolute thinness.
- Smoking lardLard actually smoking is too hot. Aim for 350–360F; a slice dropped in should bubble briskly and colour in about two to three minutes. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works the same way.
- Frying basketA wire basket is convenient but chips can mat inside it. Loose in the fat, stirred and lifted with a spider or skimmer, gives more even browning.
- DrainingBrown paper was the period's paper towel. Use paper towels or, better, a wire rack — chips sitting in their own drained fat soften. Salt the moment they come out, while the surface is still hot enough to hold it.
- YieldTwo large potatoes give roughly four small servings. They are best within an hour; stored in a tin they go leathery by the next day.
Saratoga chips are named for Saratoga Springs, New York, the fashionable spa and racing resort where the fried potato slice became a house specialty in the mid-nineteenth century. The often-repeated story credits George Crum, a cook at Moon's Lake House, with inventing them in a fit of pique after a diner sent back his fried potatoes as too thick — a tale that is traditional rather than documented, and which appears in several conflicting versions. What is certain is that by the 1870s and 1880s "Saratoga chips" or "Saratoga potatoes" was the standard American name for the thing, and it turns up in cookbook after cookbook as a side dish for game and cold meats. Commercial packaged chips were still decades away, so a household that wanted them fried its own, one small batch at a time, in a kettle of lard.