No. 2778

Potato Cakes

Gateaux de Pommes de Terre

Bake eight potatoes in the oven, and when done cut them lengthwise in two, empty out entirely, and place this in a saucepan with two finely chopped shallots fried in butter, and a pound of lean meat, either of veal or lamb or dark poultry meat, chives, salt, pepper, nutmeg, two ounces of butter, six egg-yolks, and two gills of veloute sauce (No. 415). With this preparation make inch and a half diameter balls flattening them down to five-eights of an inch in thickness; roll in beaten egg-white, then in flour, and fry in a pan with clarified butter. Dress on a folded napkin in a circle with fried parsley in the center.

← No. 2777 Potatoes, Bussy Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2779 Potato Cakes with Ham →

For the Modern Kitchen

A leftovers dish dressed up for the table: baked potato flesh bound with cooked meat, yolks and velouté, shaped into cakes and pan-fried. The mixture is soft, so temperature and handling matter more than anything else here.

Chill before shapingWith six yolks, two ounces of butter and a cup of sauce, the mixture is loose while warm and will slump in the pan. Spread it on a tray and refrigerate until firm before rolling the balls, then flatten them.
The meat should already be cookedThe recipe says only 'a pound of lean meat' and does not specify, but nothing here cooks raw meat through, so use cooked veal, lamb or dark chicken, chopped or minced fine, not raw.
Two gillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of velouté. Velouté (No. 415) is a white stock thickened with blond roux; a cup of thick chicken gravy or a roux-based sauce made with strong stock stands in without complaint.
Baking the potatoesThe recipe gives no temperature or time. Bake the eight potatoes until they yield to a squeeze; in a modern oven roughly an hour at 400F. Scoop the flesh out while hot and let the steam escape before mixing, or the cakes will be wet.
The coating orderAs written, egg white first and flour second. That gives a thin crust that sets fast in the butter. If the flour will not adhere to your cakes, flour lightly, then egg white, then flour again.
Clarified butterWhole butter burns at the frying heat needed here. Clarify it, or use ghee. Medium heat, a few minutes a side, turning once — the interior only needs heating through and the yolks setting.
Fried parsleyDry flat-leaf sprigs thoroughly, then fry in the same butter for a matter of seconds until crisp and still green. Wet parsley spits violently in hot fat.
YieldThe recipe states no yield. Eight potatoes and a pound of meat make a large quantity of mixture: at the inch-and-a-half size given, several dozen cakes, served as a garnish or entrée course.

A Little History

This is No. 2778 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast compendium he assembled from three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The cross-references — velouté at No. 415, a variant with ham at No. 2779 — are the book's whole method: it is written as a working kitchen's index rather than a domestic cookbook. The dish itself belongs to the French repertoire of croquettes and gateaux, in which cooked meat and a starch are bound with egg and a thick sauce, shaped, breaded and fried. In a restaurant kitchen one imagines this as the honorable use for the trim of yesterday's roasts and boiled fowl, though the book does not say so; the folded napkin and the ring of fried parsley are the standard nineteenth-century service that made a plate of reworked leftovers look like a course.