No. 2804

Potatoes Sauted

Pommes de Terre Sautees

Boil some long unpeeled potatoes in salted water; remove their skins and when partly cold pare into the shape of corks, then in three-sixteenths inch slices and put them in a pan with melted butter; season and saute over a moderate fire to have them slightly browned; bestrew with chopped parsley and serve at once.

← No. 2803 Potatoes, Saratoga Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2805 Potatoes Sauted with Artichoke Bottoms and T →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward sauté of pre-boiled potatoes, from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894). The whole dish turns on the potatoes being cooled and firm before they meet the butter.

Cool them firstRanhofer says "partly cold" for a reason: hot boiled potato slices break apart and turn to mash in the pan. Boil them ahead, let them sit until barely warm or fully cold, then slice.
"Long potatoes"This means an oblong, firm-fleshed variety rather than a round mealy one. A waxy potato — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, fingerling — holds its slice; a russet crumbles.
Paring into corksThe potatoes are trimmed into even cylinders so that every slice is the same diameter, largely a presentation convention of the period, though it also makes the slices cook at the same rate. Skip it if you like, but keep the slices uniform so they brown evenly.
Three-sixteenths inchJust under 5 mm — thicker than a chip, thinner than a coin's width of two. Thin enough to crisp at the edges, thick enough not to fall apart when turned.
"Moderate fire"On a modern burner, medium. Butter alone will brown and then burn over high heat before the potatoes colour; if your pan runs hot, add a spoonful of a neutral oil to the butter.
Don't crowd or stirRanhofer says only to saute over a moderate fire; he gives no instruction on how often to move the slices. In practice, letting them sit in contact with the pan long enough to take colour before tossing works best: a single uncrowded layer, turned two or three times, gives browning, while constant agitation gives steam.
SeasonThe original just says "season" — salt and pepper. Salt after the first turn, not before, so it does not draw moisture out onto the pan face.
YieldAbout 1½ lb of potatoes and 3 tablespoons of butter serves four as a side. Serve straight from the pan; these do not hold.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for most of the last third of the nineteenth century, and The Epicurean is his attempt to set down the entire repertoire of a French-trained American restaurant kitchen — some 3,500 numbered recipes, the potato section alone running to dozens. Pommes de terre sautées is one of the plainest of them, and its position in the sequence, wedged between Saratoga potatoes and a version dressed with artichoke bottoms and truffles, shows how the classical system worked: establish the base preparation, then number the variations off it. The insistence on paring boiled potatoes into cork shapes before slicing is characteristic of the period's restaurant cooking, where uniformity of cut was a mark of a properly staffed kitchen.