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Potato Marbles
Wash and pare potatoes. Shape in balls, using a French vegetable cutter. Soak fifteen minutes in cold water; take from water and dry between towels. Fry in deep fat, drain, and sprinkle with salt.
A one-line potato garnish from Fannie Farmer's kitchen, and the whole thing hangs on getting the balls dry before they meet the fat.
- The toolA "French vegetable cutter" is what we now sell as a parisienne scoop or melon baller; period sets came with several sizes, and the small end -- roughly half an inch to an inch -- is what gives you marbles. A round measuring teaspoon with a sharp edge works if you press and twist.
- Dry them properlyWet potatoes dropped into deep fat spatter violently and steam rather than brown. Blot them between towels as instructed, then give them a few more minutes in the air before frying.
- Why the soakFifteen minutes in cold water draws off surface starch, which is what makes cut potatoes stick to each other and to the pan. It also keeps them from greying while you scoop the rest.
- Fat temperatureThe book's usual guide for deep fat is a bread cube browned within a set count; no temperature is given here. On a thermometer, 360-375F suits these; the balls are small and cook through in 4-6 minutes, so hotter fat will brown the outside before the centre softens.
- Fat choiceThe original would have meant lard or beef suet. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point does the same job; some cooks prefer lard for crust and flavour.
- Batch sizeFry in small handfuls. Crowding the pan drops the temperature and you get pale, greasy marbles instead of crisp ones.
- Yield and useYield depends on the size of your scoop; a large potato might give a dozen or so balls, and a good deal of each potato ends up as trimmings. Reckon on two medium potatoes per person as a side, fewer as a garnish around a roast, and keep the trimmings for mashed potatoes or soup.
- Salt lastSalt on the way out of the fat, while the surface is still hot and slightly oily, so it sticks. Salted before frying, they weep water.
Potato marbles belong to the late-nineteenth-century vogue for shaped vegetables that came into American cooking from French professional kitchens, where pommes noisette and pommes parisienne were standard garnishes cut with exactly this scoop. Their appeal was visual: a ring of identical browned spheres around a joint of meat, produced by a technique that discards a great deal of each potato. The Boston Cooking School Cook Book carries a long run of these fried and shaped potato entries, part of Fannie Farmer's project of bringing restaurant-style presentation within reach of the middle-class cook, described in flat, measurable terms rather than as a chef's flourish.