No. 896

Croustades a la Parmentier

Prepare a potato puree (No. 725); rub it through a very fine sieve as described in the puree and with it fill some buttered six-sided molds; let them get thoroughly cold on ice, then unmold and dip them in beaten eggs and bread-crumbs, mark an incision on top with a three-quarters of an inch in diameter pastry cutter, and fry them in hot frying fat till a nice color is attained, then remove the lid, empty out the insides and refill with a salpicon of crawfish for one-half, and mushrooms and truffles for the other half; mingled with an allemande sauce (No. 407). Serve very hot on folded napkins.

← No. 895 Croustades a la Castillane Hot Side Dishes No. 897 Croustades a la Periguex →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have his potato purée and sauce already on the stove and his numbered cross-references at hand. The whole dish hinges on a purée stiff enough to hold a wall after frying.

The hinge: a stiff puréeThe hinge: a stiff purée -- A loose mashed potato will collapse the moment the crust breaks. Ranhofer sends you to his No. 725 purée, which is not given here; work with a dry, riced potato firm enough that it holds a clean shape when unmolded, nearer duchesse potato than a side of mash.
"Rub through a very fine sieve"A ricer or drum sieve, never a food processor, which turns cooked potato gluey. Push it through while the potato is still hot and let the steam escape before adding fat.
Six-sided moldsSmall hexagonal timbale molds; Ranhofer gives no size. Dariole molds or similar small cups work, ideally slightly tapered so they unmold cleanly.
Chilling is not optional"Thoroughly cold on ice" means genuinely firm through the center; a couple of hours refrigerated will usually do it, and the freezer for the last twenty minutes does no harm. Warm shapes burst in the fat.
Breading and the lidEgg and crumb (a second coat gives a shell better able to survive hollowing out). Ranhofer marks the lid with a three-quarter-inch pastry cutter after breading, and it is lifted off once fried.
Frying temperatureRanhofer says only "hot frying fat." Around 350F suits the job: hotter and the crumb colors before the interior sets; cooler and the potato drinks fat and slumps.
Salpicon and allemandeA salpicon is simply small even dice bound with sauce. Allemande (No. 407) is a velouté finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison and lemon; do not let it boil after the yolks go in. A modern velouté, a reduced cream sauce sharpened with lemon, stands in acceptably.
Crawfish and truffleCooked crawfish tails, picked, are the intended filling for half the batch; small cooked shrimp are the honest substitute. For the other half, sauté mushrooms with a little truffle or a few drops of truffle oil, added off the heat.
YieldRanhofer gives no quantities; scale the purée to the number of molds you have. Fill and serve immediately; they soften within minutes.

A Little History

The name honors Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the eighteenth-century French pharmacist and agronomist whose campaigning helped make the potato respectable food in France; by the nineteenth century "à la Parmentier" on a French menu signaled potato in some form, as it still does in hachis Parmentier. A croustade is a hollowed edible case — usually pastry or fried bread — and Ranhofer's conceit is to build one out of the potato itself, then fill it with the luxuries of the Delmonico's larder: crawfish, mushrooms, truffles, a yolk-bound allemande. The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen Charles Ranhofer ran at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house method plainly: a numbered cross-reference for every component, a dish assembled at the last minute from things already prepared, and service on a folded napkin, often said to absorb frying fat and generally taken as a conventional presentation for fried garnishes in the grand hotel style.