No. 2773

Potatoes, Bignon

Pommes de Terre Bignon

Turn some raw potatoes into rounds two and one-eighth inches in diameter; make an opening in them of one and one-eighth inch, leaving a thickness of a quarter of an inch; blanch these hollow balls for a few moments in salted water, then turn them over to drain well. Prepare a forcemeat with a shallot fried colorless in butter, adding some sausage meat (No. 68), and let cook together; put in salt, pepper, bread-crumbs, chopped parsley, and a few egg-yolks, and with this preparation fill the holes in the potatoes; strew bread-crumbs over, then parmesan cheese, sprinkle over melted butter, and range them as fast as they are ready in a sautoir lined with bards of fat pork; pour more butter over, and put on the lid, then set it in an oven to finish cooking the potatoes; when done remove the cover and brown them nicely; range neatly in a vegetable dish on a little half-glaze (No. 400).

← No. 2772 Potatoes Biarritz—Baked Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2774 Potatoes Boiled in Their Skins or Peeled, En →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives dimensions but no oven temperature and no times, which is typical of The Epicurean — it assumes a professional brigade. The hinge is the blanching: the potato shells must be par-cooked enough to finish in the covered pan without collapsing, but firm enough to hold the stuffing.

The shellsYou want potato cylinders about 2⅛ inches across with a 1⅛-inch cavity, Ranhofer's quarter-inch thickness applying at the base. Large, evenly shaped russets or big waxy potatoes cut with a round cutter work; hollow them with a melon baller or apple corer, stopping short of the base.
"Blanch a few moments"The recipe asks only for a brief blanch in well-salted simmering water, until the outer surface just yields to a knife tip. Undercook here and the potatoes will still be raw when the stuffing has dried out; overcook and the walls tear when you fill them.
Forcemeat No. 68Ranhofer's sausage meat is plain seasoned fresh pork. Bulk breakfast sausage substitutes if you accept the sage and sugar; unseasoned ground pork with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg is closer.
The egg yolksAdd them off the heat, once the shallot and pork mixture has cooled somewhat, or they will scramble and the binding is lost. Two yolks are enough for a pound of forcemeat.
Bards of fat porkThin sheets of cured or fresh pork back fat, used to line the pan so nothing catches. Sliced fatback or unsmoked pancetta is the nearest thing; ordinary bacon will work but pushes a smoke flavor into the dish.
SautoirA shallow straight-sided pan, ovenproof, with a lid — a wide skillet or a braiser. The point is that the potatoes sit in one layer and steam under the cover rather than roast.
OvenNone is given. Covered at 375F for 35 to 45 minutes, then lid off for 10 to 15 minutes to brown the crumbs and parmesan, matches the method.
Half-glaze No. 400Close to what is now called demi-glace: a reduced brown sauce/stock. A few spoonfuls of well-reduced beef or veal stock under the potatoes serves the same purpose — it is a glossy pool, not a sauce to swim in.
YieldFigure two stuffed shells per person as a garnish beside roast meat, three as a course on their own.

A Little History

This is a garnish from the repertoire Charles Ranhofer built at Delmonico's in New York and published in The Epicurean in 1894, where numbered potato preparations are filed alphabetically by name — Biarritz on one side, Boiled in Their Skins on the other. Names like "Bignon" in nineteenth-century French kitchen books are often said to commemorate a restaurateur, a patron or a colleague, though Ranhofer, who rarely explained his titles, gives no attribution. What the recipe really shows is the period's appetite for shaped vegetable work: a potato turned on a lathe of knife cuts into a uniform cylinder, hollowed, stuffed with sausage forcemeat and browned under cheese, exists to look identical to the seven others on the platter.