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Potatoes Suzette
6 medium-sized potatoes
6 tablespoons buttered crums
½ cup hot milk
1 tablespoon grated cheese
2 tablespoons melted butter
Salt and pepper
6 eggs
Prepare as for stuffed potatoes. Refill the shell almost to the top, break an egg into each opening, season with pepper and salt and sprinkle with buttered crums that have been mixed with grated cheese and bake long enough to set the eggs as well as for poached eggs. Brown lightly (about six minutes).
A stuffed baked potato with a whole egg set into the top, from an era when a recipe assumed you already knew how to make the stuffed potato it refers back to. The hinge is the egg: it needs a hot enough oven to set the white without hardening the yolk or drying the potato.
- The missing first step"Prepare as for stuffed potatoes" means bake the potatoes whole until tender, then halve or cut a lid, scoop out the flesh, and mash it with the hot milk, melted butter, salt and pepper. Pack that back into the shells, leaving a hollow in each. The book gives no time or temperature; a modern equivalent is roughly an hour at 400F.
- CrumsButtered crumbs are breadcrumbs tossed in melted butter until coated; period books used stale or dried bread as readily as fresh. Six tablespoons is enough to cap six potatoes thinly; a heavier layer will brown before the egg sets.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature. A hot oven, around 425F, will set the whites in roughly 10 to 14 minutes for eggs sitting in a warm potato; the "about six minutes" in the original appears to attach to the final browning rather than the whole bake.
- "As well as for poached eggs"The intended doneness is a set white with a soft yolk. Watch the white rather than the clock — the egg is sitting on hot potato and cooks from below as well as above.
- Egg and hollowA whole egg needs a wide well. Press a deep hollow with the back of a spoon and slip the egg in from a saucer so the yolk stays intact; a broken yolk will run down the side and burn.
- CheeseOne tablespoon of grated cheese across six potatoes is a seasoning, not a topping. "Grated cheese" in American books of this period could mean Parmesan or a dry aged cheese; either suits the dish.
- YieldSix potatoes, one egg each: six servings as a light supper or luncheon dish, three as a main course.
Dishes labelled Suzette multiplied in English-language cookbooks after French restaurant cooking became the model for genteel American entertaining — crêpes Suzette is the survivor, but the name was attached to other dishes, including egg and potato preparations. In French kitchen usage a personal name attached to a garnish was a convenient label rather than a claim of authorship, and no single origin for pommes Suzette is documented; the name is generally understood simply to mark a stuffed baked potato dressed up with egg and cheese. Its appearance in a Butterick volume, published by a pattern company for home sewers and housekeepers, shows how far restaurant-style naming had travelled into the ordinary domestic repertoire, where the appeal was practical: a baked potato and an egg made a whole meatless supper course out of what was already in the house.