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Potatoes, Chateau
Peel, wash and boil four rather small sound potatoes. Cut them into quarters, round the sides nicely to a pickle shape, wash again, then place in a saucepan with one quart water, a teaspoon salt and boil for ten minutes; drain, place in a frying pan with one ounce clarified butter. Toss them gently once in a while until of a good golden colour. Remove them with a skimmer, dress on a hot dish, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A classic French potato garnish, turned to shape and finished in butter. The instructions as printed double up on the boiling; read them as a single parboil.
- The doubled boilingThe opening "boil four rather small sound potatoes" contradicts the later ten-minute boil in salted water. Treat only the second as real: peel, turn, then parboil ten minutes from cold salted water until barely yielding at the edges but still firm at the centre. Fully cooked potatoes will collapse in the pan.
- "Pickle shape"I.e. the small barrel or gherkin shape, a couple of inches long with tapered ends; later kitchen convention fixed this cut at seven facets, though the recipe says nothing of the sort. Quarter the potatoes lengthwise and pare each piece to even curved sides with a small knife; uniformity is what makes them brown evenly.
- Choice of potatoUse a waxy or all-purpose variety — Yukon Gold, fingerling, red-skinned. A floury baking potato falls apart during turning and again in the pan.
- Clarified butterOne ounce is two tablespoons. Clarifying is not optional here: the milk solids in whole butter will scorch black before the potatoes colour. Ghee works, or add a spoon of neutral oil to whole butter.
- Toss gently once in a whileThe recipe gives no time; figure roughly ten to fifteen minutes over moderate heat, in a single uncrowded layer, turning only occasionally. Constant agitation knocks the sharp edges off the shapes and prevents a crust from forming.
- Saucepan volumeA quart of water for four small potatoes is generous but harmless; it simply keeps the temperature from dropping when they go in. Salt at about a teaspoon per quart is right.
- YieldTurning wastes a good deal of each potato, so four small ones serve two, perhaps three, as a garnish beside meat. Save the parings for soup or mash.
- ServingColour fades and crispness goes within minutes. Dress on a warmed dish, scatter the parsley at the table, and send it out immediately.
Pommes ch"ateau belong to the family of turned-potato garnishes codified in French professional kitchens in the nineteenth century, alongside pommes cocotte, noisette and parisienne, which differ chiefly in size and shape. The name is generally traced to garnitures served with roast beef or ch"ateaubriand, the thick centre-cut fillet steak; the potato and the cut are habitually paired on French menus. Turning vegetables to identical shapes had a practical point -- even pieces cook at one rate. That this appears in a book called The International Cook Book reflects how thoroughly American cookery writing of the early twentieth century treated French restaurant technique as the standard against which other cuisines were arranged.