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Potatoes, Parmentier
Plunge four medium-sized, peeled, raw potatoes in two quarts boiling water with a teaspoon salt and boil thirty minutes, drain and press through a potato masher into a bowl. Heat a tablespoon butter in a small saucepan, add half a finely chopped white onion and gently brown four minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile, then add two peeled and seeded, crushed red tomatoes, mix a little and cook for five minutes. Then add the potatoes with two egg yolks, a tablespoon thick cream, half an ounce good butter, a half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Sharply mix with a wooden spoon while cooking for eight minutes, and remove pan to a table. Lightly butter six individual pudding moulds, carefully sprinkle a little very finely chopped parsley over the interior of each, and fill with the potato preparation. Lay moulds on a small tin, pour hot water into the tin up to half their height, cover with a lightly buttered sheet of paper, set in oven for fifteen minutes, remove, unmould potatoes on a hot dish, pour a gill tomato sauce around them and serve.
A French-style potato timbale: seasoned mashed potato enriched with egg yolk and cream, baked in individual moulds in a water bath. The whole point is the unmoulding, so the mould prep matters more than anything else here.
- Butter and parsley the moulds properlyThe parsley lining is both garnish and release layer, and it only works if the butter is soft enough to hold it and the mixture is packed in without air pockets. Use six 4-6 oz ramekins or dariole moulds, press the mixture in firmly, and run a knife around the rim before turning them out.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is roughly 1/2 teaspoon and the nutmeg is a scant 1/4 teaspoon. A gill is 1/2 cup of tomato sauce for the whole dish.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern choice for a water bath this size; fifteen minutes should be enough to set the yolks and firm the edges, since the mixture goes in already hot from the pan.
- Half an ounce of butterThat is one tablespoon, in addition to the tablespoon used for the onion. Total fat is modest for the quantity of potato, and the cream is only a tablespoon, so do not expect a rich purée.
- Boiling timeThirty minutes is longer than modern varieties usually need; they are often tender in 20-25 minutes. Test with a skewer rather than watching the clock, and drain them very dry, as wet potato makes a timbale that slumps.
- Use a ricer"Press through a potato masher" most likely means a press or ricer rather than the perforated-plate masher of a modern drawer. Riced potato gives the smooth, lump-free texture the moulds need; a food processor will turn it to glue.
- Cooking the yolks inThe eight minutes of sharp stirring over heat is what thickens the mixture and takes the raw edge off the yolks. Keep the heat low-moderate and the spoon moving, or the egg will scramble in streaks.
- Yield and servingSix small moulds, so this is a side dish for six alongside roast meat rather than a course of its own. Unmould onto a warmed platter and sauce around the base, not over the top, so the parsley pattern stays visible.
The name honours Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French army pharmacist and agronomist who spent the last decades of the eighteenth century campaigning to get the potato accepted as human food in France, where it had long been regarded as fit only for livestock. By the nineteenth century French kitchen usage had settled the convention that a dish labelled Parmentier contains potato, from the shepherd's-pie-like hachis Parmentier to garnishes of potato cut in cubes or balls. A moulded, egg-bound potato purée baked in a bain-marie is standard restaurant technique of the Escoffier era, when vegetables were shaped and turned out rather than served loose.