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Philadelphia Potato Rolls
Wipe and roast in a moderate oven for forty-five minutes six good-sized white, raw, unpeeled potatoes. Remove, scoop out all the insides, and with the aid of a wooden spoon press the scooped potatoes through a wire sieve into a small saucepan, adding half an ounce good butter, two egg yolks, a half gill cream, a half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Set pan on range and sharply stir with wooden spoon while heating for five minutes. Remove, beat the whites of the two eggs to a stiff froth and gradually add to the potatoes, mixing well meanwhile. Dip two tablespoons in melted butter, with one take up as much of the preparation as it can hold and repeatedly turn the potato from one spoon to the other, so as to give a nice smooth roll form, place in a lightly buttered tin, and proceed the same with balance of the potato preparation. Set in a brisk oven until a nice golden colour, or about eight or ten minutes, remove, take up with the blade of a knife, dress on a dish and serve.
This is a duchesse-potato preparation shaped with two spoons rather than piped. The whole thing hinges on keeping the potato dry, so bake the potatoes rather than boiling them and work fast while they are hot.
- Oven temperaturesA "moderate oven" is usually reckoned around 350F; a "brisk oven" for the browning around 400-425F. Two different heats are wanted here, so plan for the change.
- Roasting timeForty-five minutes suits medium potatoes. Large baking potatoes will want 60-75 minutes at 350F; the flesh must be fully tender and floury, since any undercooked centre will leave lumps that no sieve will fix.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the pepper half a teaspoon and the nutmeg a quarter teaspoon.
- Sieve or ricerA potato ricer or food mill does the work of the wire sieve in a fraction of the time. Do not use a food processor or stick blender, which turns the starch gluey.
- The drying stepThe five minutes of sharp stirring over heat drives off moisture so the mixture holds its shape, and also sets the yolks. Keep the spoon moving and stop when the paste pulls cleanly from the pan.
- Folding the whitesLet the potato cool for a minute or two before the whites go in, or they will cook on contact and lose their lift. Fold rather than beat.
- ShapingThis is quenelle shaping: two buttered spoons passed back and forth until the mound is smooth-sided. A piping bag is quicker if the paste is stiff enough, though a star tip gives a ridged rosette rather than the smooth roll called for here.
- YieldSix good-sized potatoes make roughly 16 to 20 rolls, enough for six as a side dish. They are best straight from the oven; reheated, they dry out.
These are close kin to pommes duchesse under a local name, the piped-or-shaped potato garnish that was standard in professional French kitchens by the late nineteenth century and is generally said to have travelled into American hotel and restaurant cookery with the chefs who trained in it, though this version folds in beaten whites, which standard duchesse does not. Attaching a city to a dish appears to have been ordinary practice in books of this kind, where a preparation would be catalogued as Philadelphia, Baltimore or Boston style to signal a house version rather than any documented origin. The insistence on baking the potatoes in their skins rather than boiling them is the mark of a cook who knew that waterlogged potato will not hold a shape, and the two-spoon quenelle method is a hand skill in its own right.