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Boiled New Potatoes
Place in a bowl of water a pound or so of new potatoes, scrape off the thin skins and wash them well, and drop them as they are skinned and washed into another bowl of water, letting them remain there for an hour or so. After they have been in the water the requisite time place them in a saucepan with sufficient cold water to cover them, set the pan over the fire and boil them gently from a quarter to half an hour; then drain off the water and let them drain in the saucepan for a few minutes, after which turn them into a vegetable dish, fold them in a napkin, and serve.
A plain method that depends almost entirely on the potatoes themselves: genuinely new potatoes, thin-skinned enough to scrape rather than peel. A few of Oscar's steps repay attention, and one or two can be skipped.
- What "new" meansNew potatoes are immature tubers lifted before the skin sets, which is why they scrape off under a knife or the edge of a spoon. Supermarket "baby" potatoes are often just small mature ones with fixed skins; if the skin will not scrape, simply scrub and boil them in their jackets.
- The hour in waterSoaking scraped potatoes keeps them from discolouring and firms them slightly. It is not required for flavour, and half an hour is ample if you are moving quickly. Do not soak overnight, as the surface goes waterlogged and the flesh turns soggy.
- Salt the waterOscar gives none. Use about a teaspoon of salt per quart; potatoes take up salt poorly after cooking.
- Cold water startThe recipe specifies cold water brought up gently. A cold start is the usual advice for even cooking, on the grounds that potatoes dropped straight into boiling water can soften at the surface before the centre is done.
- TimingA quarter to half an hour reflects a wide range of sizes. Marble-sized new potatoes are done in 12-15 minutes; those the size of a walnut or larger take 20-25. Test with a skewer rather than the clock, and start checking early.
- The drain in the panThis is the step that matters. Returning the drained potatoes to the hot dry saucepan for two or three minutes lets the surface water steam off, so they arrive dry instead of slick. Shake the pan once or twice over low heat.
- The napkinFolding boiled potatoes into a linen napkin in the serving dish was standard service practice: the cloth absorbs steam and keeps them hot without condensation making them wet. A clean tea towel does the same job.
- YieldA pound serves two to three as a side dish. Butter, salt and chopped parsley or mint at the table are the usual accompaniments, though Oscar leaves the potatoes bare.
Oscar Tschirky's book was published in 1896, when the Waldorf's kitchen was cooking in a French idiom for a New York clientele, and this entry shows how little the grand hotels felt the need to dress up a vegetable at its best. New potatoes were a strictly seasonal luxury, arriving in northern markets in late spring and early summer and prized precisely because they could be scraped rather than peeled. Serving them folded in a napkin was standard in nineteenth-century service on both sides of the Atlantic, and is often recommended in English household manuals for sending up boiled potatoes; the cloth absorbs the steam that would otherwise condense and turn the surfaces clammy between kitchen and table. The instruction to boil gently is the other mark of a trained hand, since a hard rolling boil batters small potatoes apart before the centres are done.