No. 2831

Sweet Potatoes Souffled and Sweet Potato Croquettes

Patates Soufflees et Croquettes de Patates

Souffled.-Cut them up raw into quarter-inch slices, pare them oval-shaped two and three quarters by one and half inches, then fry slowly in white fat to have them cook without coloring or stiffening; drain and ten minutes later throw them back into hot fat; they should puff out considerably.

Croquettes.-After the potatoes are roasted cut them lengthwise in two and empty out the insides; to this add salt, nutmeg, egg-yolks and fresh butter; mix well together, and when the preparation is thoroughly cold roll it up into inch and three-quarter diameter balls, dip them in eggs, then roll in bread-crumbs and fry to a fine golden brown; dress in a circle, having a bunch of fried parsley to decorate the center.

← No. 2830 Sweet Potatoes, Boiled and with Lobster Cora Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes No. 2832 Sweet Potatoes Roasted and Broiled →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two preparations under one number: the double-fried puffed slices and a croquette made from roasted flesh. Both are straightforward, but the soufflé method depends entirely on fat temperature, and Ranhofer gives none.

The hinge: two fat temperaturesThe first bath must be low, roughly 275-300F, long enough to cook the slice through without browning or setting a crust. The second must be hot, 375-400F, so the trapped moisture flashes to steam and lifts the skin away from the interior.
"White fat"Fat that is clean and unused, so it leaves no colour on the slice. In a kitchen of Ranhofer's day this would most likely have been rendered pork fat or beef suet; refined peanut, sunflower or a high-smoke-point vegetable oil behaves the same way. Fat carrying browned residue from earlier frying will tint the potatoes in the first bath and defeat the purpose.
Sweet potatoes puff badlyThe technique belongs to the white potato. Sweet potatoes carry more sugar and free moisture, so they brown in the first bath if it runs warm and often blister rather than inflate. Expect only a proportion to puff even with careful work.
Cut and dryQuarter-inch is thicker than most modern soufflé-potato instructions, which favour an eighth to three-sixteenths. Cut with a mandoline for an even thickness, and pat the slices completely dry before the first bath, since surface water cools the fat and encourages spitting.
The ten-minute restNot idle time. The cooked slices need to cool and firm so that the outer layer sets; going straight from the low bath to the high one gives limp slices rather than puffed ones.
Croquette proportionsNo quantities are given. For the flesh of about 2 lb of roasted sweet potatoes, count on 2 to 3 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons of butter, a teaspoon of salt and a few gratings of nutmeg. The mixture must be stiff and fully chilled or the balls will slump and burst in the fat.
Fry temperature for the croquettes350-375F. Lower and the crumb coat absorbs fat before it colours; higher and the exterior browns before the centre warms through.
Fried parsleySprigs, bone dry, dropped into hot fat for 15 to 20 seconds until they stop sputtering and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley will spatter violently.
YieldInch-and-three-quarter balls are large; 2 lb of roasted flesh gives on the order of 18 to 20, enough for six as a garnish or side.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, where he was chef for over thirty years, and its structure is that of a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook: numbered entries, minimal quantities, and the assumption that the reader already knows how a croquette behaves. The puffed potato, pomme soufflee, is traditionally traced to a French railway kitchen in the 1830s, where a delayed train is said to have forced a cook to withdraw his potatoes and return them to the fat later, though the story is anecdote rather than record. What is documented is that the technique was firmly in the classical repertoire by Ranhofer's day, and his contribution here is to apply it to the sweet potato, a distinctly American ingredient that appears throughout this section of the book in ways a Paris kitchen would not have bothered with. The croquette half of the entry is thrift as much as cookery: the roasted skins are emptied and the flesh enriched, a use for potatoes already cooked for another service.