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Franconia Potatoes
The potatoes should not be small, else they will bake dry and crusty. Pare the potatoes, boil them fifteen minutes, and drain well. Then place them in the baking-pan with the roast, and cook for forty-five minutes, turning often and basting with the gravy from the roast. Serve them arranged about the meat. Some cooks do not parboil the potatoes before putting them in the pan, but in that case a longer time is required for cooking.
A method rather than a formula: potatoes finished in the roasting pan, in the fat and drippings of the meat. The whole thing hinges on timing them to the roast rather than to the clock.
- Choose the right potato"Should not be small" means medium-to-large potatoes, left whole as the recipe directs. A floury variety such as russet gives the fluffy interior; waxy reds stay dense but hold their shape better under repeated turning.
- The parboil is the pointFifteen minutes in boiling water (the recipe does not specify salt) cooks the outer layer to softness. Drain them thoroughly and let the steam blow off for a minute or two, then rough the surfaces by shaking them in the dry pan. That damaged starch is what crisps in the fat.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none; it assumes the roast's own oven. A moderate roasting heat will brown the potatoes more slowly than a dedicated potato-roasting heat, so expect a paler result and, if you want them crisper, finish them alone in a hotter oven for a few minutes.
- Basting with gravy"Gravy" here means the pan drippings, not thickened sauce. Baste with the fat rather than the watery juices at the bottom, which will soften rather than crisp the surface.
- Give them roomPotatoes crowded around a roast steam each other. Use a pan wide enough that they sit in a single layer with space between, or roast them in a second pan with a few spoonfuls of the drippings.
- Timing to the roastForty-five minutes suits a roast with that much cooking left. Slide them in about forty-five minutes before the meat is done, and if the roast comes out to rest, leave the potatoes in at higher heat while it does.
- YieldReckon on one large potato per person, two if the roast is the only other substantial dish.
The name is often linked to Franconia, New Hampshire, though the connection is traditional rather than documented; the dish appears in American cookbooks from the later nineteenth century into the twentieth as an accompaniment to a roast. It reflects a kitchen economy in which the oven was lit for one purpose and everything else was fitted around it: the potatoes cost no extra fuel, absorbed drippings that would otherwise be poured off, and arrived at the table already arranged on the meat platter. Butterick, whose business was dress patterns and whose household books were aimed at the practical middle-class housekeeper, includes it without ceremony. The note that some cooks skip the parboil is one of several places where such books record competing practices instead of ruling between them.