No. 2793
Potatoes, Long Branch
Pommes de Terre Long Branch
A spiral-cut fried potato from Delmonico's, given in Ranhofer's usual shorthand: the method is assumed and only the cut is described. The whole dish turns on getting the ribbon dry before it meets the fat.
- "The machine"Probably a hand-cranked rotary or spiral cutter that peels a continuous ribbon off a whole potato; Ranhofer does not describe it. A spiralizer with the thinnest ribbon blade, or a mandoline turning blade, gives the same several-yard strand; large, evenly shaped russets or other starchy potatoes work best.
- Why the soakHours in cold water rinses off surface starch so the coils fry separate and brittle instead of gluing into a mat. Change the water once or twice until it runs clear.
- Dry them completelyThe hinge of the dish. A wet ribbon steams rather than fries and collapses limp, and it will spit violently in hot fat. Spin in a salad spinner or blot between towels until the surface is matte.
- "White fat"Ranhofer's term for a clean, pale frying fat, as opposed to browned or coloured fats; in a kitchen of his date that would most likely mean lard or rendered beef fat, though he does not specify here. Any high-smoke-point neutral oil serves; the point is that nothing colors or flavors the potato.
- TemperatureFry at 340–350°F for coils this thin, in small batches so the oil does not crash. They go from pale to golden in one to two minutes, and carry over after they leave the fat, so lift them a shade light.
- Handling in the panLower one long ribbon at a time and turn it with a fork or spider as it sets, or it will fry into a solid nest. Cutting the strand into shorter lengths makes it easier to manage, losing the theater but not the texture.
- Finishing and yieldDrain on paper, salt while still hot and glistening, and serve at once -- they soften within minutes in a covered dish. Two large potatoes make a generous garnish for four, though Ranhofer gives no quantity or serving suggestion here.
Long Branch, New Jersey was a fashionable seaside resort through the second half of the nineteenth century, drawing New York society and a string of presidents to its hotels, and its name attached to this dish on Delmonico's carte. Charles Ranhofer, chef there for some three decades and author of The Epicurean (1894), catalogued potatoes with the thoroughness of a man running an enormous kitchen: this entry sits among Julienne, straw, channeled and Lyonnese potatoes, each distinguished chiefly by the cut. The proliferation of shapes may owe something to mechanical potato cutters coming into professional kitchens, which made ribbons and lattices quicker at service volume. Ranhofer's habit of cross-referencing the frying method to an earlier number rather than repeating it tells you the book was written for people who already knew how to fry, and needed only to be told what to fry.