No. 760

Tartlets a la Parmentier

Tartelettes a la Parmentier

Roll out thin some timbale paste (No. 150), and line some small hollow tartlet molds. Prepare a little puree of potatoes the same as for Duchess potatoes (No. 2785), keeping it rather stiff, and mix with it egg-yolks, butter, and parmesan cheese; with this fill the tartlet molds, having previously pricked the paste with the tip of a small knife, press the potatoes down well and smooth the top; butter it over, and besprinkle with grated parmesan, then put them into a moderate oven to cook. Unmold and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A garnish tartlet from Ranhofer's Epicurean: a thin pastry shell filled with stiff duchesse potato, gilded with parmesan. The whole thing hinges on the potato purée being dry enough to hold a shape.

Moderate ovenRead this as 350-375F. The shells are small and thin, so 15-20 minutes is usually enough to set the filling and colour the cheese.
Timbale paste (No. 150)Ranhofer's timbale paste is a stiff dough meant to hold a shape and unmold cleanly rather than to flake; see No. 150 for the exact composition. A firm pâte brisée, rolled thin, behaves in much the same way; puff pastry does not, since it will lift and distort the shell.
Duchesse potato, kept stiffBake or steam the potatoes rather than boiling them, and dry the riced flesh over low heat before adding yolks, butter and cheese. Wet purée weeps in the oven and the tartlets will not unmold.
Potato varietyUse a floury baking potato. Waxy or new potatoes tend to turn gluey when riced and enriched.
QuantitiesNone are given here. As a working ratio, 1 lb of dry potato purée to 2 egg yolks, 2 oz butter and 1-2 oz grated parmesan gives a filling stiff enough to pipe or press.
Pricking and moldsPrick the lined shells so no steam pocket lifts the base, and butter the tartlet molds well.
ParmesanGrate it finely from a block. Pre-grated cheese carries anti-caking starch and browns patchily under a buttered top.
Yield and serviceThey are a garnish, meant to be set around a roast or an entrée while still hot, and are best not left to go cold.

A Little History

The name honours Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French army pharmacist who spent the 1770s and 1780s campaigning for the potato as human food rather than fodder; in nineteenth-century kitchen French, à la Parmentier came to mean simply "with potato," and it still carries that sense today. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's practice, and its Garnishings section is full of small savoury constructions like this one, built to be arranged around a large joint on the platter rather than eaten as a course. The duchesse potato base — purée enriched with yolks and butter until it will hold a piped shape — was the workhorse of that kind of plating, and the parmesan crust here is doing the same job a glaze under the salamander would do: giving a soft filling a surface that survives the trip to the table.