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Potato Borders
These are generally used to form walls for holding different kinds of thick stews, hashes, minces, etc. The potatoes should first be boiled and then mashed either with or without butter and beaten eggs. If a mould is used it should be well buttered and the potatoes worked up thoroughly into a well-seasoned paste, with two eggs to each pound of potatoes; then press the paste firmly into the moulds and level off the top with a knife, set in a quick oven for half an hour or only a few minutes, according to whether the potato border is desired to be browned or not. Then turn onto a dish.
A duchesse-style potato paste used as an edible retaining wall on a serving platter. The technique is straightforward; the ratios and the oven are where the original assumes knowledge you may not have.
- "Quick oven"Read this as 425-450F. At that heat the surface colours quickly, which is the point: the border is set and browned rather than cooked through, since the potato is already fully boiled.
- The half hour vs. "a few minutes"The two timings are alternatives, not a range. Ten to fifteen minutes at 425F gives good colour on a moulded border; five is enough merely to dry and firm the surface. Thirty minutes at that heat will crack and over-brown most borders, so watch it rather than trusting the clock.
- Two eggs to the poundThis is the hinge. Two whole eggs per pound (450 g) of cooked potato is what makes the paste hold a vertical wall against hot stew. Less egg and the border slumps; the mixture should be stiff enough to hold a knife-cut edge before it goes near the oven.
- Choose a dry potatoRusset or another floury variety, and drain the boiled potatoes well, then let them steam dry in the pan for a minute or two before mashing. Waxy potatoes and residual water both give a slack paste that no amount of egg will rescue.
- Mash while hot, cool before the eggsPotatoes only mash smoothly while genuinely hot, but eggs beaten into a scalding mash will scramble in streaks. Let the mash drop to warm, then work in the eggs and seasoning.
- Piping instead of mouldsIf you have no border moulds, a piping bag with a large star tube produces the same wall directly on the buttered serving dish. Modern kitchens will find this easier than turning a moulded ring out intact.
- Season harder than you expectThe original says "well-seasoned" for good reason: the border is eaten alongside a concentrated stew or hash, and an underseasoned potato paste reads as bland padding. The recipe names no seasonings; salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg are the usual choices for a mixture of this type.
- YieldA pound of potatoes with two eggs should make roughly enough border for a platter serving four to six, though the original gives no yield. Scale up in pound units.
Potato borders belong to the vocabulary of nineteenth-century hotel and restaurant service, where a dish had to arrive at the table looking composed and stay hot on the way. A ring of stiff egg-enriched potato, sometimes piped, sometimes moulded, held a ragout or hash in place and did the work that a modern gratin dish does invisibly. The mixture is essentially pommes duchesse, generally traced to the French professional kitchen of the same era. This is not a recipe for a course but a component, made in quantity and reached for whenever something wet needed to be plated dry.