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Fried Potato Balls
To one cup hot riced potatoes add one tablespoon butter, one-fourth teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon celery salt, and few grains cayenne. Cool slightly, and add one-half beaten egg and one-half teaspoon finely chopped parsley. Shape in small balls, roll in flour, fry in deep fat, and drain. Potatoes, Somerset Style To two cups hot riced potatoes add two tablespoons butter, one-half cup grated mild cheese, yolks three eggs, slightly beaten, one-half teaspoon salt, and a few grains cayenne. Shape in form of birds, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, insert slices of raw potato cut to represent wings and tail, and cloves to represent eyes. Fry in deep fat and drain on brown paper.
Two variations on the same idea: stiff seasoned mashed potato, shaped, coated and deep-fried. The page runs them together, so read the second recipe as a separate dish that begins at "Potatoes, Somerset Style."
- The hinge: dry potatoRiced potato means baked or boiled potato pushed through a ricer or food mill while hot, never mashed wet. Use a floury russet, dry the boiled pieces off over low heat for a minute before ricing, and add no milk. Any moisture and the balls slacken and burst in the fat.
- "One-half beaten egg"Beat one egg, then use about a tablespoon and a half of it. The instruction is not fussiness: a whole egg in one cup of potato makes a batter too loose to shape.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature or fat test at all. Around 375F is the usual modern figure for croquettes: below that the coating soaks, above it the outside colors before the interior is hot through.
- Flour versus crumbsThe first version is only floured, which gives a thin crust and needs a very firm mixture. The Somerset version uses the full crumb-egg-crumb sequence, which is more forgiving and can be breaded an hour ahead and chilled.
- Mild cheeseRead this as a young, unaged cheese. A mild yellow cheddar or Monterey Jack works; sharp aged cheese throws off oil and can split the mixture.
- Celery salt and cayenneBoth were standard seasonings of the period and still sold. "Few grains" of cayenne is roughly a pinch, well under an eighth of a teaspoon.
- DrainingBrown paper was the kitchen's absorbent paper. Use a rack set over a sheet pan; paper towel directly under the balls traps steam and softens the crust.
- YieldOne cup of potato gives about eight to ten walnut-sized balls, enough as a garnish or side for two. The Somerset recipe, with two cups, makes six to eight birds.
- The bird garnishRaw potato wings and whole cloves for eyes will survive the fryer but are decoration only. Remove the cloves before eating; they are unpleasantly hard and medicinal in the mouth.
This pair belongs to the Boston Cooking-School tradition, in which leftover mashed potato was routinely rebuilt into croquettes, cakes and moulded shapes rather than reheated. The technique has French antecedents — pommes duchesse and their fried cousins were staples of nineteenth-century restaurant cookery — but the sculptural conceit of the Somerset version, with potato wings and clove eyes, sits comfortably in late-Victorian American table display, when a competent cook was expected to send up food that looked like something other than itself. No explanation of the name "Somerset Style" is offered by the recipe itself.