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Potato Balls
Pare and boil 1 quart potatoes; mash and add 1 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, 1/8 teaspoon paprika and 1 tablespoon melted butter; mix lightly. Take a spoonful into floured hands and roll. Dip in egg (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon cold milk), then in bread crumbs. Fry in deep hot fat.
A plain croquette mixture with no binder beyond the potato itself, so the texture of the mash decides whether the balls hold together in the fat.
- A quart of potatoesThe potatoes are measured by volume rather than weight, somewhere in the region of 1.5 to 2 lb, or about four medium potatoes, yielding roughly 2 to 3 cups of mash.
- Keep the mash dryBoil in salted water, drain thoroughly, then return the potatoes to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two to drive off steam before mashing. Wet mash will absorb fat and burst in the fryer.
- Mix lightly is the hingeOverworked potato turns gluey and the balls fry heavy. Mash and fold in the seasoning with as few strokes as will do the job.
- Chill before shapingThe original goes straight from bowl to hands. Cold mash rolls far more neatly and holds its shape in the fat; an hour in the refrigerator is enough.
- Deep hot fatThe recipe gives no temperature; for croquettes this generally means somewhere around 365 to 375F. Cooler and they soak; hotter and the crumb colours before the centre heats through. Two to three minutes should brown them, since everything inside is already cooked.
- BreadingFlour, then egg wash, then crumbs, with the crumbs pressed on firmly. Any bare patch is where the ball will split. Fine dry crumbs give a smoother crust than fresh.
- DrainingOnto a rack rather than paper, so the underside stays crisp. Fry in batches of four or five to keep the fat temperature up.
- YieldRoughly 16 to 20 balls at a spoonful apiece, serving four as a side dish.
Potato balls are the domestic-economy version of the French croquette de pommes de terre, which arrived in American and British cookbooks through the nineteenth century as a way of dressing up leftovers into something that could be sent to table. Books of this kind, written for home cooks, leaned heavily on such recipes: they needed no special equipment beyond a deep pan of fat, and looked considerably grander than their cost. The paprika is a small period marker, as it is generally said to have moved into general American use in the early twentieth century, largely as a colouring for pale foods like potato, egg and cream sauces rather than for heat.