No. 2785

Potatoes, Duchess

Pommes de Terre Duchesse

The same preparation as the marchioness (No. 2797), adding a handful of grated parmesan; roll in one and three-quarter inch diameter balls, lengthen these and roll them in bread-crumbs to have them assume an oblong form two and five-eighths inches by one and three-quarter inches; flatten to the thickness of half an inch, cut off the four corners, dip them in melted butter, then in bread-crumbs and lay them on a liberally buttered baking sheet, pouring more butter over; push into a very hot oven and when of a fine color remove from the oven and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade and assumes you already have the base preparation from No. 2797 to hand. Everything here is shaping, coating and colour.

The missing baseThe "marchioness" preparation is a duchesse-type mixture: floury potatoes baked or boiled dry, passed through a sieve while hot, and beaten with butter, egg yolks and seasoning; check No. 2797 for Ranhofer's own proportions. If you are scaling it yourself, something on the order of 2 lb potatoes, 3 oz butter and 3-4 yolks, plus the handful of grated parmesan directed here.
Dry the potatoesThe hinge of the dish. Any water left in the purée makes the shapes slump and the crumb coating turn soggy. Bake the potatoes in their skins, or boil and then dry them in a low oven or over heat before sieving.
Work them hot, shape them coldButter and yolks go in while the puree is hot; the mixture then wants an hour in the refrigerator before you can roll and cut it cleanly. Ranhofer does not mention chilling.
"A very hot oven"Take it as somewhere around 450-475F. These are already cooked through, so the oven is only there to set the crumb and take colour; watch them and take them out as soon as they are of a fine colour, as Ranhofer says.
The dimensionsThe odd measurements read like conversions from round metric sizes, though Ranhofer does not say so. In practice: balls a little under 2 inches, pressed into oblongs roughly 2 1/2 by 1 3/4 inches and half an inch thick, with the corners trimmed to make a rough octagon.
Butter and crumbsThe double coating -- melted butter, crumbs, then more butter poured over on the sheet -- is doing the work of deep frying in the oven. Use dry fine crumbs, not fresh, or they will burn before the surface crisps.
ParmesanThis is what separates the duchesse here from the plain marquise. Grate it fine and fold it in off the heat; a coarse grate leaves streaks that scorch.

A Little History

Duchesse potatoes belong to the vocabulary of nineteenth-century French garnishes, where a sieved potato purée bound with egg yolk could be piped, moulded or breaded into any number of named shapes -- marquise, dauphine, Berny, croquette -- each distinguished by an addition or a form rather than by a different method. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, catalogued them all with the numbered cross-references of a man writing a working reference for cooks rather than a book to be read through. The precise fractional inches are a tell: this was a house where a plate of garnish had to look the same on the two hundredth cover as on the first, and the French names on the menu were part of what the customer was paying for.