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Potatoes, Savoyarde
Peel, wash and slice four quite large, sound potatoes and place in an earthen dish. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg, adding one tablespoon grated Swiss cheese. Moisten with sufficient hot milk to cover them, gently mix with a fork, sprinkle one tablespoon bread crumbs over and set to bake in a hot oven for forty-five minutes. Remove and serve in the same dish.
A gratin stripped to its essentials: potatoes, hot milk, a little cheese, a dusting of crumbs. The success of the dish rests almost entirely on how thin the potatoes are cut.
- Slice thickness is the hingeThe original gives no thickness, and forty-five minutes only works if the slices are about 1/8 inch. A mandoline or the slicing blade of a food processor is worth using here; thick slices will still be firm when the top has browned.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly 1/4 teaspoon. The teaspoon of salt is on the generous side for four large potatoes by modern habit, though it seasons the milk as well as the slices.
- "A hot oven"In books of this period the phrase is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. At the upper end the milk will bubble over and the top scorch before the centre softens. 375-400F for 45 to 55 minutes, covered for the first half, gives a better result; test with a knife tip at the centre.
- The earthen dishAny shallow ovenproof dish will do, ideally wide enough that the potatoes lie no more than 1 1/2 inches deep. Butter it first: the recipe omits this and the starch will weld to bare stoneware. Stand it on a rimmed baking sheet to catch boil-over.
- Hot milkHeating the milk before it goes in is not optional decoration; it shortens the bake considerably. Whole milk is meant. Half milk, half cream makes a richer dish.
- The cheeseOne tablespoon of grated Swiss is very little by modern habit. A Gruyere-type mountain cheese suits the dish; 2 to 3 ounces grated, with some held back for the top, is closer to modern proportions. "Swiss cheese" in an American book of this period means an Emmental-type, not processed slices.
- Resting and yieldServes four as a side dish. Let it stand ten minutes off the heat so the milk thickens around the slices rather than running when spooned out.
Savoyarde means "in the style of Savoie", the Alpine region on the French side of the border with Italy and Switzerland, and in classic French cookery the label generally points to two things: potatoes and mountain cheese. The near-identical gratin dauphinois, from the neighbouring Dauphine, is traditionally made with cream and no cheese, while the savoyarde version leans on grated Gruyere-type cheese and often stock or milk rather than cream - though the two names have been used loosely for well over a century and cookbooks contradict each other freely. Nutmeg with milk and potatoes is a long-standing European pairing, inherited from the older tradition of seasoning white sauces and dairy dishes with sweet spice. Its appearance in a book called The International Cook Book reflects the ambitions of early twentieth-century American hotel and restaurant cooking, which drew its prestige from French regional names and expected home readers to recognise them.