No. 2813

Potatoes with Minced Truffles

Pommes de Terre aux Truffes Emincees

Peel raw potatoes and cut them into one-inch diameter corks, then across in three-sixteenths of an inch slices; wash, wipe well and lay them in a thin sautoir with melted butter, seasoning with salt; cover and cook in a slack oven, being careful to shake them about frequently until they are slightly browned, then add a quarter as much minced truffles cut one inch in diameter and an eighth of an inch thick; drain off the butter and baste with a small quantity of good Madeira wine, meat glaze (No. 402), and lemon juice. Pour into a vegetable dish and serve.

← No. 2812 Potatoes, Viennese Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2814 Pumpkin Fried in Small Sticks →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's potato dishes assume a brigade with column cutters and a truffle budget. The method itself is simple: sliced potatoes cooked slowly in butter under cover, then finished with a spoonful of sauce off the heat.

"Corks"A cork is a cylinder cut from the raw potato with a column cutter, the same tool as a wide apple corer. Cut 1-inch cylinders, then slice them crosswise about 3/16 inch thick, giving uniform coins. The trimming waste is considerable.
Slack ovenSlack means a cool oven by period standards, somewhere in the region of 300F; the book gives no temperatures. The point is to sweat the slices in butter rather than roast them, so keep the pan covered and shake it every few minutes, and allow a good while before they take any color.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a deep casserole. A 10-inch skillet or saute pan with a lid works; the slices should sit in one or two layers so they cook evenly.
Dry the potatoes"Wash, wipe well" is not filler. Rinsing removes surface starch so the coins do not glue together, and drying them thoroughly keeps the butter from spitting and lets them brown at the end instead of steaming.
Meat glaze, No. 402Ranhofer's glaze is brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. Reduced veal or beef stock, or a good commercial demi-glace reduced further, does the same job. You want a teaspoon or two, enough to coat, not a sauce.
The truffle proportionA quarter as much truffle as potato was reasonable in 1894 and is extravagant now. Slice black truffle 1/8 inch thick and use what you can justify; add it at the end so its aroma is not cooked off in the oven.
FinishingPour off the cooking butter before the Madeira, glaze and lemon go in, as the recipe directs, or the sauce will break into a greasy film. Roll the potatoes gently to coat.
YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; about 2 lb of potatoes will serve six as a side dish. It appears among the vegetable preparations and is served in a vegetable dish.

A Little History

This is entry No. 2813 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium drawn from his some thirty years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, a post he still held when the book appeared. The book's potato chapter runs to dozens of numbered variations distinguished by little more than the shape of the cut and the garnish, which is exactly how a large nineteenth-century kitchen worked: a standing repertoire of preparations that could be called for by number to suit whatever was being sent out. The cylinder-and-coin cut here is a labor of trimming that only makes sense with staff on hand, and the truffle, Madeira and meat glaze mark the dish as a garnish for a serious roast. Ranhofer's cross-references, such as the No. 402 meat glaze, are part of the design; the recipes were never meant to stand alone.