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Delmonico Potatoes
Place four good-sized boiled and finely hashed potatoes in a frying pan with one and a half gills cold milk, half gill cream, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix well and cook on the range for ten minutes, lightly mixing occasionally. Then add one tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese, lightly mix again. Transfer the potatoes into a gratin dish, sprinkle another light tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over and set in the oven to bake for six minutes, or until they have obtained a good golden colour; remove and serve.
A stovetop-then-oven gratin of hashed boiled potatoes, thickened only by the starch of the potatoes themselves. The measurements are the main obstacle.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of milk is 3/4 cup and half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon: read it as about 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.
- Start with cold potatoesBoiled and hashed -- The recipe calls for potatoes already boiled and finely hashed, i.e. chopped fine rather than mashed or riced. It says nothing about cooling them first, though cooled potatoes hash more cleanly and are less apt to break down into paste.
- "Cook on the range"This means the stovetop, for the stated ten minutes. Presumably the point is to cook off enough liquid that the potato starch binds the milk into a loose sauce; the recipe specifies neither the heat nor whether the pan is covered.
- Stir lightly, and rarely"Lightly mixing occasionally" is probably deliberate: vigorous stirring works the starch and can turn the mixture gluey.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. Six minutes to a golden top implies a hot oven, on the order of 450F, or a position close under the top heat, rather than a moderate one.
- ParmesanReal aged Parmigiano-Reggiano or grana, grated fine. Pre-grated cheese sold in shakers generally contains anti-caking agents and tends not to melt or colour as well.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; four good-sized potatoes would serve roughly four as a side dish, in a gratin dish of about a quart.
The name points to Delmonico's in New York, the restaurant that for much of the nineteenth century defined fine dining in the United States, and whose kitchen produced a long line of dishes carrying the house name — Delmonico steak, Lobster Newburg, and a family of creamed and gratinated potatoes. Alexander Filippini, compiler of The International Cook Book, worked for years in Delmonico's kitchens, which is why so much of the book reads as restaurant practice translated for the household cook: the gratin dish, the finish in a fierce oven, the two separate additions of Parmesan.