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Potatoes, Brioches
Peel eight medium, sound potatoes, cook them in two quarts water with a teaspoon salt for thirty-five minutes. Drain and press through a potato masher into a bowl. Season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper, one light teaspoon grated nutmeg, adding two whole raw eggs and half ounce butter. Thoroughly mix with the wooden spoon for five minutes. Spread two tablespoons flour on a corner of the table. Divide the puree into six equal parts. Roll them in the flour, giving them a nice brioche form. Place in a buttered tin pan, spread a few drops of melted butter over each brioche, and bake in the hot oven until of a nice golden colour, or eight minutes. Remove from the oven, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A duchesse-style potato shaped to look like a brioche. The mixture is stiff, so the potatoes must be dry before anything else goes in.
- Dry the potatoesAfter draining, return them to the empty hot pan for a minute or two to drive off steam before mashing. Wet potatoes make a slack paste that slumps in the oven and no amount of flour on the table will fix it.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon. That is assertive; taste as you go if you prefer less.
- NutmegA light teaspoon of grated nutmeg is a lot by current habit. Half that amount will give a gentler result if you prefer.
- A hot ovenRead this as 425-450F. The eight minutes is only to colour the outside; the potato is already cooked, so watch for the gold rather than the clock.
- The brioche formA brioche shape is a round base with a smaller ball pressed into a dimple on top, as in a brioche a tete. Work with floured hands and chill the shaped pieces for fifteen minutes if the kitchen is warm.
- Potato choiceA floury variety such as russet or Maris Piper gives the dry, fluffy mash this needs. Waxy potatoes turn gluey under five minutes of beating with a wooden spoon.
- Egg washThe melted butter gives colour, but brushing the shaped potatoes with beaten egg yolk thinned with a little cream produces the deeper glaze usually associated with this style.
- YieldSix substantial brioches, enough as a side for six. Eight medium potatoes is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb.
Duchesse potato -- mashed potato enriched with egg yolk and butter, then piped or moulded and browned -- is one of the standard garnishes of the nineteenth-century French kitchen, and shaping it into small brioches, baskets, nests or spirals was a way for a cook to show range without extra ingredients. The International Cook Book belongs to the era of the grand hotel kitchen, where such trimmings were expected on a plated main course, and the direction to serve on a hot dish with a folded napkin is pure dining-room convention: the napkin is often said to have absorbed steam and kept the potatoes from sliding on the silver, though that explanation is more traditional than documented. The name here refers only to the shape, not to any yeast dough; the joke, if it is one, is that a plain potato can be dressed up to look like a Parisian breakfast pastry.