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Saratoga Potatoes
Peel the potatoes and with a plane cut into slices about an eighth of an inch thick. Put them into cold water for a few minutes, then drain and put them into water containing a piece of ice. When ready to fry, drain, dry them well in a soft cloth, put them in a frying-basket, and then into smoking hot oil. Fry to a golden brown taking care that they do not burn. Drain on paper, sprinkle with salt and serve at once. Uncooked potatoes may be cut out with an apple-corer or vegetable cutter and cooked in the same way.
A recipe for what we now call the potato chip, from the era when they were a restaurant garnish rather than a bagged snack. Almost everything here still holds; only the fat temperature needs a number.
- The "plane"This is a mandoline, or the slicing blade of a food processor. An eighth of an inch is on the thick side for chips — closer to 1/16 in. gives the brittle, translucent result most people expect.
- Don't take "smoking hot" literallyA smoking oil is past its smoke point and breaking down. Fry at 350-375F; the original gives no temperature and expects the cook to judge the oil by eye. Below 325F the slices absorb fat and go limp; above 385F they colour before the interior moisture is driven off.
- The hinge is the dryingWet slices drop the oil temperature, spit violently, and steam rather than crisp. Dry them thoroughly between towels — the soft cloth in the original is doing real work, not being fussy.
- Why the ice waterThe cold soak rinses off surface starch, which otherwise makes slices stick together and scorch. The original says only 'a few minutes' in cold water and does not time the iced soak; ten to twenty minutes is ample, and longer does no harm if the water stays cold.
- Fry in small batchesA frying basket crammed full will cool the oil and the slices will fuse. A handful at a time, stirred once or twice to separate them, takes two to four minutes to reach golden brown.
- Salt while hotAs written, and it matters — salt adheres to the film of hot oil and slides off a cooled chip.
- The apple-corer variationThis produces small cylinders, fried the same way; they need a minute or two longer than slices and should be shaken often so they colour evenly.
- Choice of potatoA dry, starchy potato — russet or a similar baking type — crisps best. Waxy new potatoes hold too much water and stay leathery.
- YieldRoughly 1 lb of potatoes serves four as a side or garnish. They stale within a couple of hours, which is why the original insists on serving at once.
Saratoga potatoes take their name from Saratoga Springs, New York, the fashionable spa and racing resort where they were served in the resort hotels and lakeside restaurants through the second half of the nineteenth century. The dish is traditionally credited to a cook at Moon's Lake House — the name usually given is George Crum — who is said to have sliced potatoes paper-thin in response to a complaining diner; the story is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere contemporary, so it is best treated as legend attached to a real place. What is certain is that by the 1880s and 1890s "Saratoga chips" appeared on menus and in cookbooks across the United States as a genteel restaurant garnish, long before commercial packaging made them a household staple.