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Potatoes, Lorette
Have the same quantity of potato preparation as per potato brioche. Divide it into six equal parts. Roll out each part on a lightly floured table to the thickness of a pencil, then cut into pieces two inches long. Gently place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for two minutes; lift up, thoroughly drain; sprinkle a half teaspoon salt over them; dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
This is a cross-reference recipe: the whole character of the dish lives in the "potato preparation as per potato brioche" that the book assumes you have already read. Everything else is shaping and a fast fry.
- The base you actually needPotato brioche paste in books of this period generally means dry riced potato beaten with butter and egg; in some versions a little chou paste (pâte à choux) is added to lighten it, which is what gives the Lorette family its hollow interior. Whatever the exact formula, a plain wet mash will not hold a pencil shape in the fat.
- Dry the potato hardThis is the hinge. Bake or steam the potatoes rather than boil them, and return the riced flesh to a dry pan over low heat until it stops steaming. Wet potato paste absorbs fat and disintegrates in the basket.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil at frying temperatures; the phrase means fat at frying heat. The book gives no figure; in modern terms something in the region of 350-375F suits. Below that the strips soak; much above it they colour before the inside has puffed.
- Two minutes is rightUnusually for a recipe of this age, the timing holds. The pieces are small and the paste is already cooked, so two minutes to puff and colour is all they want. Fry in small batches so the fat temperature does not crash.
- Flour on the table, not in the pasteUse the lightest possible dusting to roll. Flour worked into the paste makes the finished pieces heavy and pasty rather than hollow.
- The folded napkinA linen napkin on the serving dish is called for repeatedly in period recipes for fried dishes; it absorbs residual fat and keeps the pieces from sitting in it. A rack or paper does the same job if you would rather not launder linen.
- SaltA half teaspoon over the whole batch, as the recipe directs, applied the moment they leave the fat while the surface is still tacky.
- YieldThe book divides the paste into six equal parts for rolling; the actual quantity depends on the potato brioche recipe it refers back to. Serve as a garnish alongside a roast or grilled meat, and go to table straight away — they deflate within minutes.
Pommes Lorette belong to the classical French repertoire of fried potato garnishes codified in the late nineteenth century, alongside dauphine, duchesse and croquette — all variations on the same idea of binding dry riced potato with egg, then either piping, moulding or frying it. The distinguishing trick of the Lorette and dauphine family is the addition of choux paste, which makes the interior hollow and light rather than dense; the name is generally traced to Parisian restaurant usage rather than to any documented person or place. Its appearance here reflects how thoroughly French hotel cookery had become the shared professional language of American kitchens: the reader is expected to know the potato brioche paste already and simply be told which shape to give it.