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Milanaise Potatoes
Pare and boil as many potatoes as desired.
When done press through a ricer into a heated bowl and whip with a fork, adding, little by little, enough boiling hot chicken stock to make them creamy. Season with salt and white pepper, then add as much whipped cream as will bring them to such consistence that they can be slowly beaten with an egg beater. Beat for full five minutes, heap them in a buttered baking dish, sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and brown lightly in a very hot oven. Send directly to the table.
A whipped potato casserole enriched with stock and cream rather than butter. The whole point is aeration, so the details of texture and timing matter more than the quantities, none of which are given.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives no amounts at all. For four servings, start with about 2 lb of a floury potato (russet or King Edward), roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup hot chicken stock, and 1/2 cup cream whipped to soft peaks.
- Use a floury potatoWaxy or new potatoes turn gluey under a beater. Russets or another high-starch variety rice dry and take the liquid without collapsing.
- Keep everything hotThe stock must be boiling and the bowl heated, as written. Cold liquid added to riced potato makes it seize and dulls the finished texture; the beating cannot recover it.
- Five minutes of beatingThis is the hinge. Much of the volume comes from air beaten into the hot mixture, and an under-beaten mixture bakes flat and dense. A stand mixer on medium may do it faster than five minutes; watch for a visible rise in the bowl and stop there.
- Fold the cream, do not beat it inThe whipped cream is there to lighten. Note that the recipe itself adds it before the five-minute beating; if you want to protect the air, fold it in gently rather than beating it hard.
- "A very hot oven"Roughly 450 to 500F in period usage. You want colour on the cheese in 8 to 12 minutes, not a slow bake that dries the surface into a crust.
- ParmesanGrate it fine from a block. Pre-grated cheese usually contains anti-caking agents such as cellulose or starch, which can make it brown patchily under high heat.
- Serve at once"Send directly to the table" is not politeness. The aerated potato begins to slump within a few minutes of leaving the oven, and reheating it gives you ordinary mash.
The name points to Milan, and in French-influenced cookery "a la milanaise" was applied to a range of dishes finished with Parmesan; "Milanese" still labels a breaded cutlet. The treatment sits alongside other riced-potato preparations of the period -- duchesse and marquise potatoes, pommes mousseline -- all variations on riced potato lightened with liquid and browned in a dish. The economy is easy to see: potatoes were among the cheapest things in the market, chicken stock a by-product of a bird already cooked, and a small amount of cream and a spoonful of hard cheese carried a whole dish.