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Saratoga Potatoes
Pare and cut into thin slices on a slaw-cutter four large potatoes (new are best), let stand in ice-cold salt water while breakfast is cooking; take a handful of the potatoes, squeeze the water from them and dry in a napkin; separate the slices and drop a handful at a time into a skillet of boiling lard, taking care that they do not strike together, stir with a fork till they are a light brown color, take out with a wire spoon, drain well and serve in an open dish. They are very nice served cold. - Mrs. Jasper Sager.
This is a straightforward potato chip, fried to order in deep fat. Two details carry the whole dish: the slices must be genuinely thin, and they must be genuinely dry before they meet the fat.
- The hinge: dry the slicesWater on the surface of the potato drives violent spattering and steams the slice instead of crisping it. Squeeze, then blot between towels until the potato feels dry to the touch.
- Slaw-cutterA hand-held slaw or cabbage cutter is what a modern cook calls a mandoline. Aim for about 1/16 inch; a food processor slicing disc or a steady hand with a sharp knife will also do.
- The cold-water soakStanding the slices in ice water pulls out surface starch, which is what keeps them from gluing together in the pan. Thirty minutes is plenty, though the original's "while breakfast is cooking" implies longer and does no harm.
- Boiling lardLard was the standard frying fat and works beautifully here; any neutral oil with a high smoke point substitutes directly. "Boiling" means shimmering hot, around 350-365F -- fat does not actually boil, and if it is smoking it is too hot.
- Small batchesA handful at a time is not fussiness. Crowding drops the fat temperature and the slices sog rather than crisp, and separating them as they go in keeps them from welding into clumps.
- Wire spoonA spider or slotted skimmer. Drain on paper or a rack and salt immediately, while the surface is still hot enough to hold it; the recipe itself calls for no salt beyond the soaking water.
- YieldFour large potatoes make a generous bowl for four to six as a side. They are good cold, as the original suggests, and are best eaten the day they are made.
Saratoga potatoes take their name from Saratoga Springs, New York, the fashionable racing and spa resort, where the thin fried potato is traditionally said to have been devised in a hotel or restaurant kitchen in the 1850s. The most repeated version of the story credits a cook at Moon's Lake House, though the details vary with the teller and none of it is firmly documented. What is documented is the name's spread: by the time The Dixie Cook Book was compiled late in the nineteenth century, "Saratoga potatoes" or "Saratoga chips" appears in American household books all over the country as the standard term for what we now simply call a potato chip. That it is contributed by a named cook and offered as a breakfast dish is a reminder that the chip began as something fried fresh at home for a meal, not bought in a bag.