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Potatoes, Colbert
Boil six medium potatoes thirty minutes. Drain and peel, then cut in half-inch-square pieces, plunge in boiling fat and fry to a nice golden colour. Drain, then place in a saucepan with a gill demi-glace, juice of half a sound lemon, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, half teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, toss well on fire and cook six minutes. Dress on a hot dish and serve.
A fried-potato dish finished in a meat glaze — the sauce is the whole point, and it needs to be reduced enough to coat rather than pool.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. That is a generous amount of sauce for six potatoes; add half at first and let it reduce onto them.
- Demi-glaceA brown veal or beef stock reduced with espagnole sauce until it coats a spoon. A good jarred demi-glace or a well-reduced homemade brown stock both work; thin canned gravy will make the potatoes soggy.
- Boil then fryThirty minutes for whole medium potatoes is about right for a floury variety, but stop when a knife meets slight resistance. Fully soft potatoes fall apart when cut into half-inch dice and again in the fat.
- Cool before cuttingLet the boiled potatoes sit until they are barely warm and dry on the surface. Wet, steaming potato spits violently in deep fat and fries pale.
- Frying fatThe recipe says only 'boiling fat'; deep frying of the period was commonly done in beef fat or lard. Any neutral oil at roughly 350-375F does the job; fry in batches so the fat stays hot.
- The pepperHalf a teaspoon each of salt and pepper for six potatoes is heavy by modern palates, and the demi-glace is already salted. Season at the end instead.
- The last six minutesToss rather than stir, and keep the heat brisk so the sauce tightens and glazes. Left to sit at a low simmer, the fried crust softens and the dish turns to stewed potato.
- YieldSix medium potatoes serve four to six as a side dish. Serve immediately — this does not hold.
Nineteenth-century French kitchens attached the name Colbert to a family of preparations built on meat glaze sharpened with lemon and finished with herbs — a pattern -- sauce Colbert is made that way, while beurre Colbert is a compound butter with meat glaze and tarragon -- and the label is generally traced to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, though the connection is honorific rather than culinary. Applying it to potatoes is a hotel-kitchen move: take a garnish already in the repertoire and give it a classical name. The International Cook Book was assembled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how a restaurant brigade thought about vegetables -- the potato is a vehicle for a sauce that was simmering all day anyway, and the six-minute finish is exactly the sort of last-minute step a line cook could do to order.