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Fowl, Duck, Game, Hare: Potatoes
No. 174. Patate alla crema (Potatoes in cream) Ingredients: Potatoes, butter, Parmesan, white stock, cream, pepper, salt.
Boil two pounds of potatoes in salted water for a quarter of an hour, peel and cut them into slices about the size of a penny, then arrange them in layers in a very deep fireproof dish (with a lid), and on each a layer pour little melted butter, a little good white stock and a dust of grated Parmesan. Reduce a pint and a half of cream to half its quantity, add a little pepper, and pour it over the potatoes. Put the dish in the oven for twenty minutes..
Serve as hot as possible. a No. 175. Cestelline di patate alla giardiniera (Potatoes) Ingredients: Potatoes, white stock, salt, butter, peas, asparagus, sprouts, beans, &c.
Choose some big sound potatoes, cut them in half and scoop out a little of the centre so as to form a cavity, blanch them in salted water and cook for a quarter of an hour in good white stock and a little butter. Then fill in the cavities with a macédoine of cooked vegetables and add a little cream to each.
No. 176. Patate al Pomidoro (Potatoes with Tomato Sauce) Ingredients: Potatoes, butter, salt, tomatoes, lemon, stock.
Peel three or four raw potatoes, cut them in slices about the size of a five-shilling piece, then put them into a stewpan with two ounces of melted butter, and cook them gently until they are a good colour, add salt, drain off the butter, then glaze them by adding half a glass of good stock. Arrange them on a dish, pour some good tomato sauce over them, and add a little butter and a squeeze of lemon juice.
No. 177. Spinaci alla Milanese (Spinach) Ingredients: Spinach, butter, Veluté sauce, salt, pepper, flour, stock.
Wash three pounds of spinach at least six times, boil it in a pint of water, then mince it up very fine, pass it through a hair-sieve, and put it in a saucepan with one and a half ounces of butter, add a cupful of reduced Veluté sauce (No. 2) with cream, salt, and pepper, add a dessert-spoonful of flour and butter mixed, and boil until the spinach is firm enough to make into a shape, garnish with hardboiled eggs cut into quarters, and pour a good Espagnole sauce (No. 1) round the dish.
Four side dishes for potatoes and spinach from an Edwardian Italian collection written for English cooks, which is why the vocabulary swings between Italian names and French sauces. The measurements assume a kitchen with stock and mother sauces already on hand.
- The coinsA pre-decimal penny was about 1.2 inches across and a five-shilling piece (a crown) about 1.5 inches, so the comparison is to the width of the slice rather than its thickness; the tomato-sauce potatoes are cut slightly larger.
- Oven heat for No. 174No temperature is given, and the dish specified is a deep fireproof one with a lid. Twenty minutes for an already-boiled, already-hot dish suggests a moderate to hot oven, somewhere around 375-400F, but that is a modern guess rather than anything the book states.
- Par-boil, then sliceFifteen minutes in salted water leaves the potatoes firm at the centre; that is deliberate, so they slice cleanly rather than crumbling. Waxy varieties hold their shape far better than floury ones here.
- The cream reductionA pint and a half reduced by half is about 15 imperial fl oz of finished cream for 2 lb of potatoes. Use a cream of about 36 per cent fat or above; thinner creams such as single cream or half-and-half are much more likely to split as they reduce.
- White stockA pale unroasted veal or chicken stock, unsalted and unthickened. A light chicken stock is the practical substitute, but taste before adding salt since the Parmesan brings plenty.
- Velouté and EspagnoleThe spinach depends on two of the classic mother sauces, which the book numbers Espagnole (No. 1) and Veluté (No. 2): velouté is a white stock thickened with blond roux, espagnole a brown stock with roux and mirepoix. Both need making in advance; there is no shortcut in the recipe.
- Washing spinach six timesThat instruction dates from field-grown spinach delivered with its soil. Bagged spinach needs one or two rinses, but the grit warning still holds for bunched spinach with roots attached.
- Sieving the spinachPassing the spinach through a hair sieve is what gives the smooth purée; the stiffness that lets it be moulded comes from boiling it down with the reduced velouté and the flour-and-butter added at the end. A food processor followed by a fine mesh strainer does the same work as the sieve.
- YieldNo yields are given. As rough estimates, No. 174 would serve about six as a side; No. 176 uses only three or four potatoes and would stretch to two or three; the spinach, from three pounds raw, would give four to six portions once reduced.
These entries come from The Cook's Decameron (1901), Mrs W. G. Waters's collection of Italian dishes hung on a Boccaccio-style frame in which a house party spends ten days talking and eating. The conceit was to introduce English readers to Italian cooking, but the technical language is thoroughly French — velouté, espagnole, macédoine, glazing with stock — which is exactly what one would expect of a professionally trained kitchen at the turn of the century, when the wider French tradition running from Carême to Escoffier supplied the common grammar of serious cookery whatever the national label on the menu. The potato dishes themselves are hotel-restaurant work rather than domestic Italian: scooped potato cases filled with a macédoine, cream reduced by half, Parmesan used as seasoning rather than as a topping. Spinaci alla Milanese is the odd one out in being genuinely regional in name, though the finished dish, moulded and ringed with brown sauce, owes more to the French service of the period than to any Lombard kitchen.