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Sauted Potato
Cut up into slices eight medium-sized cold boiled potatoes, place an ounce and a half of butter in a fryingpan and add the potatoes, seasoning with half a pinch of salt and pepper, and toss them well in the pan for a couple of minutes, after which form them into the shape of an omelet and allow them to become of a golden color, which will require about five minutes' time. With a spoon take up all the butter lying at the bottom of the pan, and slide the potatoes onto a hot dish, and serve. Stewed Potatoes Place half a pound of raw potatoes cut into small pieces in a saucepan over the fire, together with two ounces of butter, a medium-sized onion peeled and chopped, a teaspoonful of common salt and celery salt mixed, two teaspoonfuls of chopped parsley and three tablespoonfuls of water; simmer gently until the potatoes are soft, then add a quarter of a pint of milk and a tablespoonful of flour blended smooth with a tablespoonful of vinegar; stir thoroughly for ten minutes or till boiling.
Two potato dishes run together on one page: a pan-browned cake of cold boiled potatoes, and a creamed stew of raw ones. Both are straightforward once the weights are converted.
- Weights and measuresAn ounce and a half of butter is 3 tablespoons; two ounces is 4 tablespoons. A quarter of a pint of milk is half a cup on the 16-ounce American pint this book would have used. "Half a pinch" is best read as simply a very small amount of each, less than the eighth-teaspoon usually given for a pinch.
- The hinge: genuinely cold potatoesThe sauté depends on boiled potatoes that have chilled thoroughly, ideally overnight. Warm potatoes shed starch and moisture, stick to the pan and break up instead of knitting into a cake.
- "Form them into the shape of an omelet"Press the slices into a flat cake with the back of a spoon or spatula and leave them alone for the five minutes of browning. Since the potatoes are slid out whole, the comparison appears to be about a single unmoulded cake rather than anything folded.
- Pan and heatUse a well-seasoned cast iron or heavy nonstick pan of about 10 inches over medium-high heat. Three tablespoons of butter alone will brown fast at that temperature; a spoonful of neutral oil alongside it keeps the milk solids from burning during the five minutes.
- Draining off the butterTipping the pan and spooning out the fat before serving is the difference between a crisp cake and a greasy one. Do it with the pan off the heat.
- Stewed potatoes: cut smallHalf a pound of raw potatoes with only three tablespoons of water will scorch if the pieces are large. Half-inch dice, a lid on the pan and the lowest possible flame; check at 15 minutes.
- The vinegar and flourA tablespoon of flour slaked with vinegar rather than water is doing double duty as thickener and sharpener. Whisk it smooth before it goes in or it will lump, and expect the milk to look slightly curdled at first; it smooths out as it comes to a boil.
- YieldThe sauté serves four as a side; the stewed potatoes, from half a pound, serve two.
Pommes sautées is one of the plain workhorses of the French professional kitchen, and Oscar Tschirky's version follows the familiar method: cold boiled potatoes, sliced, tossed in butter, then pressed and browned so the cake can be turned out in one piece onto a hot plate. The comparison to an omelet captures that shape and that unmoulding gesture. Oscar was not a chef but the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 book reads as a record of what the hotel's kitchens actually sent out, which is why humble items like these sit alongside the terrapin and canvasback. The stewed version is the more American of the two, with its celery salt and its final splash of vinegar in the milk.