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Potatoes Viennoise
Prepare the same quantity of potatoes as for potatoes brioches. Divide the puree into six equal parts. Sift a little flour on a corner of the table. Roll out each piece to a nice oval form. Slightly flatten them with the blade of a knife to the forms of Vienna bread; then with the knife again make a double incision lengthwise on the surface of each. Lightly butter a baking pan, lay the potatoes into the pan; lightly glaze the surface of each with the yolk of an egg, then place them in a very brisk oven to bake for twelve minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish and serve.
This is a shaping variation on duchesse-style potato paste, and it assumes you have already read the recipe it points back to. A few notes on what that means in practice.
- The base you need first"Potatoes brioches" is the recipe this one points back to, and it is not reproduced on this page. It is a duchesse-type potato paste: floury potatoes cooked and mashed or riced, dried out, and bound with butter and egg yolks. Whatever the exact proportions, it must be dry and firm enough to hold a shape on a floured board; a loose, wet puree will slump in the oven.
- Quantity and yieldThe original gives no weight. Roughly 2 lb of potatoes with 3 to 4 tablespoons butter and 3 to 4 yolks makes a paste that divides comfortably into the six ovals called for, serving six as a side.
- A very brisk ovenTake that as 450-475F. The point is to set and colour the surface fast; the interior is already cooked, so a moderate oven only dries the shapes out over a longer time.
- Twelve minutes is realisticUnlike much of the period's timing, this one holds. You are browning a glaze, not cooking potato. Pull them when the tops are deep gold and the slashes have opened.
- The egg washYolk alone, brushed thinly. Loosen it with a teaspoon of water or cream or it will sit in streaks and scorch before the rest colours. Do not let it pool in the cuts.
- The incisions"A double incision lengthwise" means two parallel slashes along the top, imitating the scored crust of a Vienna loaf. Cut about a quarter inch deep with a thin, damp knife blade so the paste does not drag.
- Working the pasteShape while the mixture is still warm and pliable; cold duchesse cracks at the edges when rolled. Flour the surface lightly, as directed, but sparingly, or the ovals will taste of raw flour.
- ServingThey deflate and toughen as they cool. Bake them last, dress straight onto a heated dish, and send them out at once.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with dishes labelled by nationality, and "Viennoise" here refers only to the shape: the potato paste is trimmed and slashed to imitate a small Vienna loaf. Vienna bread had become a byword in the second half of the nineteenth century, its reputation carried west by the Austrian bakery at the 1867 Paris Exposition, and cooks borrowed the look of its scored, egg-glazed crust for all kinds of things that were not bread. The paste itself belongs to the French duchesse family, potato dried and enriched with butter and yolk until it could be piped, moulded, or as here rolled by hand, a technique that gave kitchens a way to turn the same batch of puree into a dozen differently named garnishes.