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Broiled Sweet Potatoes
Take some peeled sweet potatoes which have been steam-boiled and slice them three-eights of an inch thick, trim them to olive-shaped pieces and place them in a double broiler, salt them well and coat with some melted butter, then broil them over a slow fire. When done, serve inside a folded napkin.
A side dish built entirely on technique rather than ingredients: the sweet potatoes are cooked through first, then finished over fire for colour and smoke. Everything depends on the potato being fully tender before it meets the grill.
- Steam-boiled means cooked throughSteam or boil the peeled potatoes until a knife meets no resistance, then cool them before slicing. Broiling here is a browning step only, and half-cooked slices will scorch before the centres soften.
- Double broilerNot a double boiler. Oscar means a hinged wire grill basket with two faces that clamp the food between them, so the whole batch can be turned in one motion. A fish grilling basket does the same job; failing that, use a grill pan and turn the slices individually.
- Olive-shaped piecesA tourné-type trim: pare each slice down to a small barrel or olive shape with a paring knife (modern practice conventionally counts seven faces). It is purely decorative and costs a good deal of the potato. Squared or simply trimmed slices broil identically.
- Three-eighths of an inchAbout 1 cm. Thinner slices collapse when handled cooked, thicker ones dry at the surface before they colour.
- A slow fireCoals past their peak, or a moderate rather than fierce grill. Sweet potatoes carry a lot of sugar and will blacken quickly over a hot fire.
- Butter over flameMelted butter burns and drips into the fire. Clarified butter, or a mix of butter and a neutral oil, gives the same flavour with less flare-up. Brush on a second coat when you turn them.
- Served in a folded napkinA period service for anything meant to stay hot and dry: the linen absorbs steam so the crust does not soften. A warmed plate lined with a cloth napkin does the same thing.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity; about 1 lb of sweet potatoes, roughly two medium, will serve four as a garnish.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book catalogues the standing repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen, where a single vegetable was expected to appear in a dozen guises so that no two menus read alike. Sweet potatoes were an inexpensive and thoroughly American staple, and turning them out olive-shaped and grilled was the kind of labour a brigade of kitchen hands made possible. The tourn" practice, where uniform shapes guaranteed even cooking and a plate that looked composed; that a New York hotel applied it to a New World tuber is characteristic of the period's cooking, which dressed native ingredients in French clothing. Service inside a folded napkin was standard for fried and broiled garnishes throughout the late nineteenth century and appears repeatedly in Oscar's pages.