No. 2777

Potatoes, Bussy

Pommes de Terre Bussy

After having the potatoes prepared the same as for the dauphine potatoes (No. 2783), and before dividing it into balls, mix in some chopped parsley. Take up some with a teaspoon, detach it with the finger, and let fall into hot frying fat; when of a good color drain dry, and dress on a folded napkin.

← No. 2776 Potatoes Broiled with Fried Bread-Raspings Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2778 Potato Cakes →

For the Modern Kitchen

A fritter rather than a dish in its own right: the whole recipe depends on a cross-reference, so the work is in knowing what "prepared the same as for the dauphine potatoes" means. Once you have that mixture, the rest is two minutes of frying.

What No. 2783 actually isDauphine potatoes are, in the standard French sense, a dry potato purée (baked or boiled and well dried out over heat, then sieved) enriched with egg yolk and butter and combined with unsweetened pâte à choux. Ranhofer's own proportions are not given on this page; the more choux in the mixture, the lighter and hollower the fritter.
Dry the potato hardThis is the hinge. Wet purée will not hold its shape in the fat and may spit or break apart. Use a floury potato, bake or steam rather than boil if you can, and return the riced flesh to a dry pan over low heat until it stops steaming.
Frying fat and temperatureThe book specifies only 'hot frying fat'; a period kitchen would most likely have reached for clarified beef fat or lard. In modern practice any neutral fat at around 350-360F works; the fritters need to puff and set through, and hotter fat colors the outside before the choux has cooked. Two to three minutes, turning, until deep gold.
The teaspoon methodDipping the spoon in hot fat or water between quenelles keeps the paste from sticking. Fry in small batches — the mixture is wet enough that crowding drops the fat temperature fast.
ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work, but chop it fine and dry it in a cloth first. Damp parsley loosens the paste and makes the fat sputter.
"Dress on a folded napkin"The period way of draining and serving fried food at table. A rack over a sheet pan drains better; the napkin was as much presentation as absorption.
Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; scale it to the amount of dauphine mixture you have, allowing a few small spoonfuls per person as a garnish alongside roast or grilled meat. Salt them the moment they come out of the fat and serve at once — they collapse as they cool.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its potato chapter is a catalogue of the French repertoire as it stood at the end of the nineteenth century: dozens of numbered variations, most of them a single sentence pointing back to a parent preparation. Pommes dauphine — potato purée bound with choux paste and deep-fried — is the parent here, and Bussy is simply that mixture with parsley folded through and shaped with a spoon instead of rolled into balls. Naming such variants after people, places and patrons was standard practice in the grande cuisine of the period; the origin of the Bussy name, however, is not documented. What the entry really shows is how a professional kitchen worked from a system: a cook who knew No. 2783 could produce a dozen other dishes from a line of text apiece.