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Gastronomical Potatoes
Cut with a tube-cutter twelve medium-sized potatoes which have been peeled and well-washed into pieces about an inch and a half long, place them in a saucepan and cover with water, adding a pinch of salt and cook for twenty minutes; then drain them and place on a hot dish, pouring over a gill of hot perigueux sauce, and serve.
Potatoes, Genevoise Style Cut into shreds four medium-sized potatoes after they have been peeled, washed and thoroughly drained; then season with a pinch of salt and half a pinch of pepper. Butter lightly half a dozen tartlet moulds with clarified butter, cover the bottoms with grated Parmesan cheese and arrange a layer of potatoes on top, sprinkle more of the cheese over them, and continue on in this manner until the moulds are filled, and drop a little clarified butter over all. Place them in a very hot stove for a few minutes and then put them into a hot oven and bake for twenty-five minutes, after which turn then out, place on a hot dish on a folded napkin, and serve.
Two separate potato dishes run together on the page: a boiled cylinder-cut potato finished with a truffle sauce, and a shredded potato-and-Parmesan cake baked in tartlet moulds. Both are simple; the work is in the cutting and in the sauce you have to make yourself.
- The tube-cutterA column or tube cutter is a sharpened metal tube pushed lengthwise through a peeled potato to yield smooth cylinders about the diameter of a thumb. A large apple corer does the same job. Cut the cylinders to an inch and a half as directed and save the trimmings for soup, since the waste is considerable.
- A gillHalf a cup, about 120 ml, for twelve potatoes' worth of cylinders. That is a light coating rather than a pool.
- Perigueux sauceThere is no bottled equivalent. It is a demi-glace finished with Madeira and chopped truffle, named for Périgueux in the Périgord truffle country. A good reduced veal or beef stock thickened lightly, with Madeira and truffle or truffle paste stirred in off the heat, is the practical route; the truffle should never boil.
- Twenty minutes' boilingToo long for uniform inch-and-a-half cylinders, which will collapse at the edges. Start testing at eight to ten minutes and drain the moment a skewer goes through cleanly, or the cylinders will not hold their shape on the dish.
- Shredded potatoes must be dry"Thoroughly drained" is the hinge of the second dish. Shred, rinse off surface starch, then wring the shreds hard in a towel. Wet potato steams instead of browning and the cake will not turn out of the mould in one piece.
- "A very hot stove," then "a hot oven"The first phrase most likely means the top of the range: set the filled moulds over direct heat for a few minutes to start the butter and set the bottom crust. Then transfer to the oven. The book gives no temperature; a period "hot oven" is generally read as somewhere in the region of 400-450F, for the twenty-five minutes given.
- Tartlet mouldsSmall metal moulds of about two to three inches across, buttered with clarified butter because whole butter's milk solids scorch and glue the cake in place. A muffin tin of similar size works, but metal only, not silicone, if you want the crust.
- Yield and serviceThe first dish serves six to eight as a side; the second gives six small cakes, one per person. The folded napkin is called for only in the second recipe; it is standard period service, usually explained as absorbing butter and steam and keeping the cakes from sliding on the platter.
Oscar Tschirky, who never actually cooked professionally at the Waldorf but presided over its dining rooms and put his name to this 1896 compilation, was recording the potato repertoire of a French-trained American hotel kitchen at its most elaborate. Potatoes in that system were classified by treatment as well as by shape and garnish, and the names carry geography with them: Périgueux signals truffle from the Périgord, one of the most expensive things a New York kitchen could put on a plate in the 1890s, while Genevoise is one of a long list of place-name styles applied loosely and not always consistently across the period's cookbooks. Both dishes belong to the era when potatoes were expected to be turned out in identical geometric forms.