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Glazed Potatoes
Take a pound or so of good potatoes, boil and skin them and roll them in the yolk of egg; then brown them in the oven, and serve hot.
A one-line recipe that assumes a great deal: small whole potatoes, already boiled and peeled, given a yolk glaze and a short blast of heat. The hinge is that the yolk is a varnish, not a batter.
- Choose the right potatoThe recipe says only "good potatoes," but since they are boiled whole, peeled and then handled, small waxy potatoes or new potatoes are the safest choice; floury bakers are more likely to break up when rolled in the yolk.
- Boil them shortCook only until a skewer just passes through, then drain and peel while warm. Fully soft potatoes collapse under handling, and the oven stage will finish them.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature; "brown them in the oven" implies a hot oven and a short stay rather than long baking. A hot oven for ten to fifteen minutes, turning once, suits the intention.
- Yolk quantityThe recipe gives no quantity, only "the yolk of egg"; a pound of small potatoes will take roughly a yolk or two, and if the yolk is too thick to coat evenly it can be loosened with a little water or cream.
- Dry the surface firstWet potatoes shed the glaze. Let the peeled potatoes steam dry in the colander for a few minutes before rolling, and set them on a buttered pan or parchment with space between them.
- The yolk does get cookedRaw yolk goes into the oven, but the coating is thin and sets through in the first minutes of browning. This is not a case of uncooked egg being served.
- YieldA pound serves two or three as a side dish. A dish of this kind would suit a roast, the browned surface playing against the gravy.
Glazing — coating something in yolk, butter or reduced stock and setting the surface with heat — was a standard finish in the French-trained hotel kitchens Oscar Tschirky worked in, and the terse instruction here is typical of professional writing of the period: it tells a cook who already knows the method which ingredients to reach for. The book's brevity is a reminder that The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) was compiled less as a teaching manual than as a vast reference list of the dishes a great hotel could produce on demand.