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Potato Cake
Mash some cold boiled potatoes, dredge over lightly with flour and season well with salt and pepper, adding a little yeast; then mix the potatoes with a little cold milk into a not too thin paste and roll out to a round shape about an inch in thickness. Take a fryingpan which will hold the cake nicely, place a lump of butter in it to melt, then put in the cake, covering it with a plate, and cook over a good fire. When one side of the cake is done turn it carefully over, adding a little butter, if necessary, and cook on the other side; drain the cake and lay it on a fancy dish-paper or folded napkin, spread over a heated dish, garnishing it with fried parsley and serve.
A cold-potato cake fried whole in a covered pan — closer to a thick Swiss rösti in handling than to anything baked. Oscar gives no quantities, so the proportions are yours to judge.
- QuantitiesNothing is measured. About 2 lb of cold boiled potatoes makes a cake for a 9- to 10-inch pan, roughly 4 servings; figure 2 to 3 tablespoons flour and 3 to 4 tablespoons milk, added a little at a time until the mass holds a shape without slumping.
- The yeast is the odd noteA "little yeast" in a cake that goes straight into a hot pan has no time to do anything. Either let the mixture stand covered in a warm place for an hour before rolling, or leave the yeast out; a teaspoon of baking powder gives the lift the recipe seems to be after without the wait.
- Roll it thick, and coldAn inch is correct — thinner and it becomes a pancake rather than a cake. Work the potatoes while thoroughly cold and handle them as little as possible; overworked potato turns gluey.
- "A good fire"Medium heat on a modern burner, not high. An inch-thick cake needs 10 to 15 minutes a side to heat through, and a fierce flame will blacken the crust well before the centre is hot.
- The plate is the pointCovering the pan traps steam and cooks the interior while the underside crusts. A lid works as well as Oscar's plate; leave it on for the first side and remove it for the last few minutes if the surface seems damp.
- Turning itSlide the cake onto a plate, invert a second plate over it, flip, and return it to the pan with fresh butter. Attempting the turn with a spatula alone usually breaks a cake this size.
- Fried parsleyThe garnish wants very dry sprigs dropped into hot fat for 10 to 15 seconds only, until they stiffen and go bright green. Wet parsley spits violently, and a few seconds too long turns it brown and bitter.
- Dish-paperA doily of lace-cut paper laid on the platter to absorb fat — standard hotel presentation of the period. A folded napkin, as Oscar allows, or a plain paper liner does the same job.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) was compiled while he was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, and much of it appears to draw on the continental repertoire associated with the hotel's kitchens — which is why a plain fried potato cake sits a few pages from truffled game. Cakes of this kind, cold cooked potato bound with a little flour and browned whole in butter under cover, belong to a broad European family of thrift dishes: the Swiss rösti, the Irish and Scottish potato farls. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks used potato and yeast together constantly, since a potato batter was the standard medium for keeping a homemade yeast sponge alive. Serving the finished cake on a cut-paper doily with fried parsley is pure hotel dining room, an inexpensive dish dressed to arrive at table looking like it cost something.