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Potatoes Fried
Mrs. A.
Pare potatoes; cut in pieces one-half inch wide, and as long as the potato; keep them in cold water till wanted; drop in boiling lard; when nearly done, take them out with a skimmer and drain them; boil up the lard again, and drop them back, and fry till done; this makes them puff up; sprinkle with salt and serve very hot.
This is a double-fry method for chipped potatoes, written before anyone had a thermometer in the fat. The two-stage frying is the whole point of the recipe and it still works.
- The hinge: two temperatures, not oneThe first fry cooks the interior through without colouring it; the second, in hotter fat, sets and blisters the crust. Modern practice puts the first pass at 300-325F for 5-8 minutes and the second at 375-400F for 2-3 minutes, with the potatoes rested and fully drained in between.
- "Boil up the lard again"This means bring the fat back up to full frying heat after the cold potatoes have dropped its temperature. Without a thermometer the return to heat had to be judged by eye; with one, wait for the reading to climb back before the second batch goes in.
- LardLard was the standard frying fat and gives a clean, faintly savoury result. Refined peanut, sunflower or beef tallow behaves much the same way; butter will not, as its milk solids burn well below frying heat, and unrefined olive oil is a poor choice for deep frying.
- Cold water soakNot merely to stop browning. It rinses surface starch, which is what keeps the pieces from gluing together and helps the crust crisp. Dry them thoroughly on a towel before they meet the fat, or the fat will erupt.
- Potato varietyA high-starch, low-moisture potato such as russet or Maris Piper puffs and crisps; waxy new potatoes stay dense and greasy. The recipe names no variety and presumably assumes whatever ordinary storage potato was to hand.
- SizeHalf an inch wide and the full length of the potato is a thick chip, closer to a British chip shop cut than a shoestring. Thinner cuts need the first fry shortened considerably or they will overcook before the second pass.
- Quantity and batchesFry in small batches so the fat does not drop more than 25 or 30 degrees. Salt only after the final fry, as salt drawn out early makes the surface weep.
Twice-frying is the technique that separates a good fried potato from a limp one, and it appears in American household books through the second half of the nineteenth century without anyone claiming to have invented it; the puffing effect the recipe describes is the same principle behind pommes souffl\were making by the mid-1800s and which is often said to have been discovered by accident when a batch of potatoes had to be pulled from the fat and returned to it. That this version is credited simply to "Mrs. A." is characteristic of The Home Cook Book, compiled in the 1870s from contributions gathered locally and often identified only by surname or an initial; it is generally counted among the early American charity cookbooks, though more than one book circulated under that title in the same decade. Lard, not oil, was the assumed medium: it was rendered at home or bought cheaply by the pail, and it was the fat a kitchen kept on hand, strained and saved for the next use.