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Potatoes, Julienne (Peel and wash well three)
Peel and wash well three medium, sound, raw potatoes. If no julienne-shaped potato cutter is at hand, cut with a sharp knife into julienne match-shaped strips, wash again, drain well in a frying basket, then fry in boiling fat for six minutes. Take them up in the basket, drain thoroughly; sprinkle a good teaspoon salt over them. Shake them well, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A straight fried-potato recipe, and the only real variables are the size of the cut and the temperature of the fat.
- "Boiling fat"Fat was often judged by shimmer and sound rather than by thermometer. For matchstick potatoes, roughly 350-375F is the usual working range; below that they absorb grease, above that the outsides colour before the insides cook.
- Six minutes is generousTrue julienne strips of about 1/8 inch are likely to be crisp and pale gold well before six minutes; the longer time suits a thicker cut. Judge by colour and by the sound of the fat quietening as the moisture leaves.
- Dry them properlyThe instruction to wash again and drain well is the hinge. Surface starch makes the strips stick together in a mat, and surface water makes the fat erupt. Rinse until the water runs clear, then pat dry in a towel before they go near the pan.
- Fry in batchesThree potatoes is more volume than it looks once cut. Dropping the lot in at once will pull the fat temperature down sharply and give you limp, oily strips.
- The fat itselfPeriod kitchens used beef suet, lard or a rendered fat kept in a crock and reused. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point does the same job.
- Salt at the endSalting while they are still hot and glossy is correct, and the shaking distributes it. A full teaspoon for three potatoes is on the heavy side by current taste; start with half.
- The folded napkinA serving convention, not a garnish. The linen absorbs residual fat and keeps the potatoes off a surface where steam would collect and soften them. A rack or paper does the same and looks less formal.
- YieldThree medium potatoes serves three or four as a side, two if they are the point of the plate. They do not hold; serve within minutes of frying.
Pommes julienne take their name from the knife cut, not from any cook called Julienne; the term for fine matchstick strips of vegetable appears in French culinary writing well before it attached itself to potatoes, and its origin is generally traced to the julienne soups of thin-cut vegetables in broth. Deep-fried potatoes in various thicknesses were codified in nineteenth-century French practice as a family of garnishes distinguished almost entirely by cut and size, from the thick pont-neuf down through allumette to the hair-fine paille. This book's presence of a dedicated potato cutter in the first line is telling, though the recipe politely allows for the household that does not own one. Served in a folded napkin, these were a restaurant flourish brought home, often accompanying a grilled steak or chop.