Home › The World's Kitchen › Potatoes Au Gratin with Anchovies
Potatoes Au Gratin with Anchovies
Finely hash six peeled, medium, boiled potatoes, place in a sautoire with an ounce butter, two gills cold milk, half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg, mix well, then cook five minutes. Cut into small pieces eight anchovies in oil, add them to the potatoes, mix well and let cook five minutes. Mix with a spoon once in a while. Transfer to a baking dish, sprinkle surface with two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese, arrange a few little bits butter on top of the cheese, then set to bake in oven ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A straightforward potato gratin, but the vessel names and liquid measures need translating, and the oven temperature is left entirely to the cook.
- GillsTwo gills is one cup of milk. For six medium boiled potatoes that gives a loose, creamy hash rather than a stiff mash.
- SautoireA sautoire is a straight-sided shallow pan; a modern 10-inch skillet or saute pan does the job.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon holds roughly a quarter teaspoon. So a scant 1/4 teaspoon each of white pepper and nutmeg, which is assertive for nutmeg — start with less if you are unsure.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Ten minutes implies a hot oven: 425F will brown the Parmesan without drying the potatoes. If you want a deeper crust, finish under the broiler for a minute instead of extending the time.
- SaltEight oil-packed anchovies and two tablespoons of Parmesan bring plenty of salt. Add the half teaspoon of salt only after tasting, or hold it back entirely.
- AnchoviesOil-packed fillets, not salt-packed whole fish; a standard 2-ounce tin holds roughly ten to twelve, so eight is most of one. The recipe says only to cut them into small pieces, but you can break them up further with the spoon during the second five minutes if you would rather not leave them visible.
- Boiled potatoesBest made with potatoes boiled ahead and cooled, which hash cleanly instead of turning to paste. A waxy or all-purpose variety holds its texture better than a floury baker.
- YieldServes four as a side, two or three as a light supper dish with a salad.
Anchovy and potato is one of the great Northern European pairings — a logic often seen in Swedish Jansson's frestelse, though that dish is traditionally made with Swedish spice-cured sprats sold as 'ansjovis' rather than with anchovies, and in the anchovy butters and sauces that turn up throughout nineteenth-century service. Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) gathered dishes from across Europe for American kitchens, and this one sits squarely in the French-hotel idiom he learned at Delmonico's: au gratin means only that the surface is browned, usually with cheese and butter, and the term carried no implication of the deep baked casserole it suggests today. The nutmeg is the period's signature touch, said to have been common in creamed potato and vegetable preparations well before it retreated to desserts and béchamel.