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French Potatoes
Mrs. W. G. Davis.
Peel and cut some potatoes in slices lengthwise, wipe dry and drop them in boiling lard; serve very hot.
Three lines of instruction for what we now call french fries. Everything the recipe leaves out is temperature, and that is the whole dish.
- "Boiling lard" is not boilingFat does not boil at frying heat; the bubbling comes from water leaving the potato. Aim for 350-375F, which is where a slice sizzles briskly and browns in a few minutes without darkening at the edges. Below 325F the potatoes absorb fat and go limp.
- Wipe dry, and mean itThis is the hinge of the recipe. Surface water hitting hot fat causes violent spatter and drops the temperature; pat the slices thoroughly with a towel before they go in.
- Cut and variety"Slices lengthwise" means long flat planks or batons, not rounds. A starchy potato, russet or similar, fries drier and fluffier than a waxy boiling potato.
- Fry in batchesCrowding the pan drops the fat temperature sharply and steams the potatoes. Work in small handfuls and let the fat recover between batches.
- SaltThe recipe gives none. Salt immediately on lifting from the fat, while the surface is still hot enough to hold it.
- LardRendered pork lard was a common household frying fat in this period and gives a clean flavour; its smoke point (around 370F) sits at the top of the frying range. Other neutral frying fats will work, though the flavour differs; shelf-stable supermarket lard is often a stabilised, partly hydrogenated product rather than plain rendered leaf or back fat.
- QuantityAllow one medium potato per person as a side, and enough fat that the slices float freely rather than sit on the bottom of the pan.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by local women and sold to raise money for the Home for the Friendless, which is why nearly every entry carries a contributor's name rather than a house style. "French potatoes" here appears to reflect a nineteenth-century habit of attaching "French" or "French fried" to food cooked in deep fat; the fuller phrase "French fried potatoes" turns up in English-language print in roughly the same period. Frying was done in lard because that is what a household rendered and kept; commercial vegetable shortenings were not yet in general household use.