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Fried Potatoes
Peel and wash well a half dozen good-sized potatoes and slice them to a quarter of an inch in thickness, place them in hot clarified beef-suet or fat and cook slowly. When they become quite soft turn them out onto a skimmer; ten minutes is usually sufficient time. Then the fat should be heated again to the boiling point, put in the potatoes once more and smooth them down with the skimmer; after the lapse of a couple of minutes they will swell up considerably; then lift them out, drain and sprinkle over a pinch of salt. Serve on a heated dish with a folded napkin.
This is a two-stage fry — the ancestor of pommes soufflées — and it lives or dies on the temperature gap between the first cooking and the second.
- The hinge: two distinct fat temperaturesThe first bath must be slow, around 275–300F, so the slices cook through without browning or setting a hard crust. The second must be hot, 375–400F, so steam trapped inside expands fast enough to lift the surfaces apart. If the first fry is too hot the potato seals and will never puff.
- "Boiling point" of fatOscar means the visibly shimmering, actively bubbling stage, not any literal boiling temperature. Beef fat smokes around 400F, so work by thermometer rather than by look.
- Slice thicknessA quarter inch is at the thick end for this technique; modern versions cut 1/8 inch on a mandoline for more reliable puffing. Whatever thickness you choose, keeping the slices as even as possible helps the batch cook at the same rate.
- Dry the slicesHe says wash well but not dry. Surface water drops the fat temperature and spits; pat the slices thoroughly dry before the first fry.
- Clarified beef suetRendered, strained beef fat — tallow, sold by butchers and some supermarkets. Refined peanut or high-oleic sunflower oil behaves the same way, though the flavour is plainer.
- TimingsTen minutes at low heat is right for quarter-inch slices; thinner cuts need five or six. The second fry is genuinely about two minutes, and the potatoes should come out the moment they inflate.
- Expect failuresEven in professional kitchens a proportion of slices refuse to puff. The flat ones are still good eating; potatoes with high starch and low moisture, such as russets, give the best odds.
- Yield and serviceSix large potatoes serves six to eight as a side. The folded napkin on the dish is Victorian practice for absorbing residual fat and holding heat; a warmed plate with paper beneath does the same job.
Oscar Tschirky's method is the classic French pommes soufflées: the sudden heat of the second bath turns interior moisture to steam and separates the potato's surfaces into a hollow shell. The dish is traditionally traced to the 1837 opening of the Paris–Saint-Germain railway, where a chef is said to have pulled his potatoes from the fat when the train was delayed and returned them to hot fat when it finally arrived. That story is repeated in nearly every French cookery reference and documented in none of them — including the claim, part of the same legend, that the effect was stumbled on by accident. What the recipe itself shows is that by the 1890s the two-bath trick was in use in grand-hotel kitchens like the Waldorf's, with beef suet as the frying fat and the temperatures judged by eye.