No. 2812

Potatoes, Viennese

Pommes de Terre Viennoise

To be made with the same preparation as Marchioness (No. 2797); divide it into balls, roll these on a table, covered with rice flour, to look like a Vienna loaf,--thick in the center and pointed at the ends. Imitate the gashed in the center of its length, egg over twice and cook in a hot oven. Serve on a folded napkin.

← No. 2811 Potato Timbale a la Parmentier Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2813 Potatoes with Minced Truffles →

For the Modern Kitchen

A shaping-and-finishing recipe rather than a standalone one: Ranhofer assumes you have already made his Marchioness potato mixture (No. 2797), essentially a stiff duchesse — dry riced potato bound with butter and egg yolks, seasoned and sometimes enriched further. Everything here is about form and glaze.

The mixture must be dryThe hinge of the dish. Bake or steam the potatoes rather than boiling them, rice them hot, and dry the purée over low heat before working in butter and yolks. A wet mixture will slump in the oven and the shaped loaves lose their points and gash.
"Egg over twice"Two coats of egg wash — whole egg beaten with a little water or milk — the first allowed to set and dry before the second goes on. That double glaze is what gives the deep bread-crust colour that makes the imitation loaf convincing.
Rice flourUsed on the table because it does not develop gluten or gum up, so the paste rolls cleanly and stays matte. Cornstarch behaves similarly; plain wheat flour works but leaves a slightly pasty surface under the glaze.
"A hot oven"In modern terms roughly 425-450F. The pieces are already cooked through, so the point is fast colour, not baking; ten minutes or so on a lined sheet is usually enough.
The gashScore the length of each loaf with a sharp knife or a razor. Ranhofer's order is to gash first and then egg over twice; scoring after the wash keeps the cut from filling in, but that reverses what he wrote.
Chill before bakingNot in the original, but shaped pieces hold their form far better after twenty minutes in the refrigerator.
YieldRanhofer gives none, and none can be derived from the text. As a rough guess, a mixture built on about 2 lb of potatoes would make something like a dozen small loaves, enough as a garnish for eight or so.
The folded napkinA period serving convention: fried and baked garnishes went out on a linen napkin folded on the platter to absorb steam and keep the crust dry. It works, and it is optional.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of a great American restaurant kitchen, and its potato section runs to dozens of numbered variations on a handful of base preparations — duchesse, croquette, purée — differentiated almost entirely by shape. Pommes Viennoise belongs to that family: the same paste as Marchioness, moulded to mimic the pointed, slashed Vienna loaf, a bread that had become a byword for fine white baking after Viennese steam-oven methods spread through Europe and America in the second half of the nineteenth century. The joke, such as it is, is trompe-l'œil — a potato pretending to be bread — and it reflects a service style in which the garnish was expected to be recognised and admired at the table. Naming a potato after the Marchioness or after Vienna also let a kitchen list a long, varied menu without inventing new cookery, which is much of what the numbered sequence in this book records.