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Potatoes Copeaux
Peel, wash and drain two large, sound, raw potatoes, then cut into four even slices, crosswise, and with the point of a sharp knife cut them copeau-like to the thickness of a half dollar. Plunge them in cold water, wash well, drain on a cloth, then fry in boiling fat to a nice golden colour. Remove with a skimmer, thoroughly drain, dredge a teaspoon of salt over, dress on a dish and serve.
A short French method for potato shavings, fried crisp and salted. Almost everything depends on how thin and how dry the shavings are.
- The hinge: dry them completelyPotatoes that go into the fat damp will steam rather than crisp, and will spit violently. After the cold-water rinse, spread them on a towel and pat until no moisture shows.
- "Copeau-like"Copeau is French for a wood shaving. The idea is to pare curling ribbons off the cut faces with the knife point, the way a plane lifts shavings from a board. A vegetable peeler gives the same effect with far less trouble.
- "The thickness of a half dollar"A coin comparison, meaning thin: a half dollar runs a little under a tenth of an inch. The phrase is loose in any case; thick shavings brown outside before they cook through.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil. The period phrase means fat at frying heat, roughly 350-375F. At the time this would have been lard or beef drippings; any neutral oil with a high smoke point works.
- The cold-water soakThe cold-water rinse -- The recipe has you plunge and wash the shavings in cold water, which carries off surface starch so they fry separate instead of welding into a mat. No soaking time is specified.
- SaltA full teaspoon over two potatoes is heavy by modern taste. Salt lightly the moment they leave the fat, while the surface is still hot enough to hold it, and add more at the table.
- YieldTwo large potatoes give a side dish for two, three at a stretch. They collapse and soften within minutes, so fry them last and serve at once.
The International Cook Book came out of the professional hotel and restaurant kitchen of the turn of the century, and the vocabulary shows it: the dish is named not for what it is but for the cut, in French, as a line cook would have known it. Nineteenth-century French cookery classified fried potatoes almost entirely by shape - pailles (straws), allumettes (matchsticks), chips, gaufrettes (waffled), copeaux (shavings) - each requiring a different knife stroke and each considered a separate preparation, which is why a book of this period will carry a dozen near-identical potato recipes. The shaving cut in particular was a display of knife control, and its irregular curls fry to a mix of crisp edge and tender centre that a uniform slice never quite gives.