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Potato Balls
Select large potatoes, as free from blemishes as possible; cut into balls with a vegetable cutter; cook in boiling salted water until tender; cover with melted butter and chopped parsley and serve.
A three-line recipe that depends entirely on cutting and timing. The vessel and the scoop are the only things needing translation.
- The "vegetable cutter"Most likely what is now sold as a Parisienne scoop or melon baller; period "vegetable cutters" came in a range of sizes. Press it into the raw potato and twist a full turn to release a clean sphere.
- Choose the right potatoA waxy or all-purpose potato (Yukon Gold, red-skinned, or similar) holds its shape as a ball. Baking potatoes such as russets are too mealy and will fray at the edges or break apart in the water.
- Size them the sameThe recipe's success is uniformity: balls of equal diameter finish together. Cut them all before any go in the pot, and hold them in cold water so they don't discolour.
- Cook timeThe original says only "until tender." Inch balls take about 8 to 10 minutes at a gentle boil — test one with a skewer at eight. Held longer they round off into mush, and a rolling boil knocks them against each other.
- Salted waterAbout 1 tablespoon of salt per 4 quarts. Potatoes absorb seasoning less readily once cooked, so the cooking water is the main opportunity to season them from within.
- Dry before dressingDrain and let the balls sit in the hot dry pan off the heat for half a minute so surface water steams away. Otherwise the melted butter slides off rather than coating them.
- Butter and parsleyFigure 3 to 4 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley for two pounds of potato balls. Add the parsley to the butter off the heat so it stays green.
- The trimmingsScooping wastes roughly half of each potato. The offcuts are perfectly good — save them for mashed potato, soup, or hash rather than the bin.
- YieldFour to five pounds of large potatoes gives enough balls for six as a side dish.
Potatoes cut into spheres and finished in butter are often identified with the dish French kitchens call pommes parisiennes, though in that preparation the scooped potatoes are conventionally sautéed or rissolées in butter until golden; boiled spheres dressed with butter and parsley sit closer to pommes persillées. Recipes of this kind tended to spread through American cookbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as restaurant-style garnishing worked its way into domestic teaching — the point of the dish is not flavour, which is simply boiled potato and butter, but appearance on the plate. Its presence in a book of this period fits the era's interest in "dainty" service and in teaching home cooks the small manual skills of the professional kitchen. The frank waste involved is itself telling: half of every potato discarded for the sake of a neat garnish.