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Potatoes, Alfonso
Cut four good-sized, peeled, cold boiled potatoes in quarter-inch pieces; cut in same shape three Spanish sweet red peppers. Place both in a saucepan with one gill milk, half gill cream and one teaspoon salt, mix well and cook for fifteen minutes.
Mix on a plate an ounce butter with a teaspoon flour, add little by little to potatoes, and continually stir until thoroughly mixed. Transfer potatoes into a baking dish, sprinkle a tablespoon Parmesan cheese over, set in oven for ten minutes, remove and serve.
A creamed potato gratin built on cold boiled potatoes, thickened at the end with kneaded butter and flour rather than a roux at the start. The measurements are small and precise, so read the conversions before you begin.
- GillsOne gill is half a cup, so the sauce is 1/2 cup milk plus 1/4 cup cream. That is barely enough to coat four potatoes; keep the heat low and stir, or it will catch before the fifteen minutes are up.
- Spanish sweet red peppersMost likely canned or jarred pimientos, already cooked and skinned, rather than raw bell peppers; three of them amounts to a small jar's worth, drained. Fresh peppers would need longer than fifteen minutes of gentle simmering to soften fully.
- The butter and flourAn ounce of butter worked with a teaspoon of flour on a plate is beurre manié. Add it in small pinches off the boil and stir until each is absorbed; dropping it in as one lump gives you a floury pocket.
- Oven heatThe book gives none. Ten minutes at 425F browns the Parmesan without drying the sauce; the dish is already fully cooked, so the oven is only there to glaze the top.
- PotatoesUse a waxy or all-purpose potato boiled the day before and thoroughly cold. A warm or floury potato breaks down into mash the moment you stir the thickening in.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of salt for four potatoes is on the high side by modern taste, especially with Parmesan on top. Start with half and correct at the end.
- YieldServes four as a side dish; use a shallow baking dish small enough that the cheese covers the surface.
The International Cook Book, by Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, first appeared in 1906 and gathers dishes from many national kitchens. Dishes named after individuals were a standard restaurant convention of that era — a cook attached a patron's or a monarch's name to a garnish and the name stuck to the menu. "Alfonso" here may nod to Spain, whose Alfonso XIII reigned from 1886 to 1931, and the marker of Spanishness is the sweet red pepper: Spanish pimientos, roasted and peeled and packed in tins, were being imported into the United States by around the turn of the century and turned up in American cooking as a decorative red note in creamed dishes, deviled eggs and cheese spreads. The technique underneath the name is thoroughly French — beurre manié and a Parmesan glaze — which is fair warning that in books of this kind national labels often describe the garnish more than the method.