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Potatoes and Parsley
Place in a saucepan of boiling water some well washed and peeled small potatoes, boil for five minutes and then strain off the water, and pour in enough fresh boiling water to height of potatoes, add a lump of butter and a little salt and boil them until they become quite tender; then remove them carefully and put them in a deep dish, keeping them near the fire. Place in the liquor in which the potatoes were boiled a moderate quantity of finely-chopped parsley, boil for a few minutes and until somewhat thickly reduced; then pour the sauce over the potatoes, and serve.
A plain boiled-potato dish whose whole point is the cooking liquid: the starch the potatoes shed becomes the sauce. Waxy potatoes and a shallow amount of water are what make it work.
- The hinge: shallow water"Enough fresh boiling water to height of potatoes" means barely covering them, not the deep pot most cooks default to. Flooding the pan leaves you with a thin parsley broth that will not reduce in a few minutes.
- Choice of potatoSmall waxy potatoes — new potatoes, fingerlings, Yukon-type — hold their shape through two boils. Russets and other floury bakers will collapse into the liquid before it reduces.
- The five-minute first boilThe recipe gives no reason for draining the first water, only the instruction to do it. Do not skip it; the second boil is what builds the sauce.
- A lump of butterRoughly 1 to 2 tablespoons for about 2 lb of potatoes. It emulsifies with the starchy water at the reduction stage, which is where the body of the sauce comes from.
- Total cooking timeSmall potatoes will be tender 12 to 18 minutes into the second boil, depending on size. Test with a skewer rather than watching the clock.
- "Keeping them near the fire"A warm place beside the range. A low oven, covered, will hold them for the two or three minutes the sauce needs.
- Parsley quantity"A moderate quantity" is unquantified; a few tablespoons finely chopped suits this amount of potatoes. Note that the recipe adds it at the start of the reduction and boils it for a few minutes, not at the end.
- Reducing the sauceBoil hard and uncovered until it coats a spoon lightly, a few tablespoons per serving. If it stays watery, the potatoes were too well covered; a small extra knob of butter whisked in off the heat will pull it together.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities; on the 2 lb assumed above it would serve about four as a side dish. Salt the sauce again after reducing, since reduction concentrates what went in earlier.
Oscar Tschirky's book collects the working repertoire of a large New York hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, which is why a dish this modest sits among the terrapin and canvasback. The technique — boiling in shallow water and serving the potatoes in their own reduced, buttered liquor — is a thrifty one, using the starch already in the pot instead of a separate roux or cream. Parsley is the garnish.