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Montmorency Vegetables
Cut with a Saratoga potato machine or slice exceedingly fine two medium carrots, two white turnips, a white onion, one small peeled eggplant, three medium, peeled raw potatoes, one green pepper and the head of a very small, sound, cored white cabbage. Finely chop a bean garlic, three branches parsley, one branch chervil, leaves of a branch of tarragon and add to the vegetables. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and mix them well. Lightly butter a small square tin of about eight inches square, arrange vegetables in the tin by layers, sprinkle over a teaspoon grated Parmesan cheese and half ounce butter, arrange over each layer alternately, cover with a sheet of buttered paper, set in oven to bake for one hour and ten minutes, remove and use as required.
A layered vegetable gratin that lives or dies on how thin the slices are. Everything goes into the tin raw, so uniform thinness is the only thing that gets the potato and turnip cooked in the same hour and ten minutes as the cabbage.
- Saratoga potato machineThe rotary or bench slicer used for Saratoga chips, the period name for potato crisps. A mandoline on its thinnest setting is the direct equivalent; a food processor slicing disc will also do. Aim for something close to 1/16 inch throughout.
- Bean garlicPeriod shorthand for a piece of garlic about the size of a bean, i.e. a quantity described by size rather than by count. A small clove, or part of a large one, finely chopped.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits the hour and ten minutes; the dish should be tender to a knife tip through the centre and the top lightly coloured once the paper comes off.
- Buttered paperParchment cut to fit, buttered side down, does the same job of trapping steam without sticking. Foil traps more moisture and gives a wetter result. Lift the paper for the last fifteen minutes if you want any browning at all.
- Cheese and butter per layerRead the last clause as instruction to alternate: a teaspoon of Parmesan on one layer, half an ounce of butter on the next, and so on up. For an eight-inch tin of this depth expect to use roughly 2 to 3 oz butter in total; the Parmesan, at a teaspoon a layer, comes to well under an ounce.
- The eggplant and potatoBoth discolour on contact with air. Slice them last, or hold the potato in cold water and dry it thoroughly before layering, since wet slices will not take the seasoning and dilute the dish.
- Press the layersSalted raw vegetables shed a good deal of water in the oven. Pack each layer down firmly as you build so the finished gratin holds together when cut rather than collapsing into a loose pile.
- YieldAn eight-inch square tin filled to the top gives six to eight side portions. Let it settle ten minutes out of the oven before cutting.
Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, built The International Cook Book (1906) around the classical French repertoire he had cooked professionally, and its dish names follow the garnish nomenclature of that kitchen. Montmorency is a place north of Paris and the name of one of the great French noble houses; in cookery it most often signals sour cherries, though carrots are sometimes said to figure in Montmorency garnishes as well, and what Filippini meant by the name here is undocumented. The technique itself is older and plainer than the name: finely sliced roots and greens layered with butter and cheese under a paper lid, cooked slowly until they fuse. What marks it as a hotel recipe rather than a domestic one is the assumption that a mechanical slicer sits on the bench, along with fresh chervil and tarragon as a matter of course.