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Soufflees of Potatoes
Neatly wipe and place six good-sized, sound potatoes in a roasting pan and place in oven for forty-five minutes, turning once in a while. Remove, cut each potato in half lengthwise, then scoop out interior, press meat through sieve into a saucepan, add half an ounce butter, two egg yolks, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper, tablespoon cream, sharply stir on fire with wooden spoon while heating for five minutes, then remove to a table. Beat up whites of three eggs to a stiff froth, add to potatoes and gently mix. Evenly divide preparation in the twelve shells, with a lightly buttered knife blade neatly smooth surface of each, place on a tin, set in brisk oven for fifteen minutes, remove, dress on hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
This is a twice-baked stuffed potato lightened with beaten egg white — closer to a soufflé than to a modern loaded potato. The hinge is the folding: the whites carry all the lift, so the potato base must be warm rather than hot, and the mixing must stop the moment it looks uniform.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives no temperature for the first roast; a hot oven of roughly 400-425F will dry large baking potatoes out properly. A "brisk oven" for the final 15 minutes is conventionally taken as somewhere around 425-450F, hot enough to set and brown the tops before the froth collapses.
- Saltspoon and small weightsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- Sieve or ricerPressing the flesh through a sieve is not fussiness — it keeps the starch from going gluey. A ricer or food mill does the same job. Never use a food processor or blender; the starch turns to paste.
- The five minutes on the fireThe purpose is to drive off moisture and cook the yolks slightly, not to brown anything. Keep the heat low to moderate and stir constantly, then let the mixture cool to warm before the whites go in or they will deflate on contact.
- WhitesThree whites to two yolks means separating three eggs leaves one yolk over, not one white; no fourth egg is required. Beat to a stiff but not dry froth, and fold in two additions rather than all at once.
- Scooping the shellsLeave a shell about a quarter inch thick. Scooped too thin, the halves slump on the tin under the weight of the filling.
- Bake and serve immediatelyLike any soufflé mixture these fall as they cool. They will not hold or reheat; carry them to the table straight from the oven.
- YieldTwelve halves, which serves six as a side dish or four generously. A folded napkin was a common way of dressing such dishes in period service; the cloth is usually said to absorb steam and keep the halves from sliding on the platter.
The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its pages carry the stamp of a professional kitchen writing for domestic readers: terse imperatives, weights in ounces, and instructions like "remove to a table." The dish itself is baked potato flesh enriched with butter, yolk and cream, then lightened with whipped white and returned to the oven in its own skin. It should not be confused with pommes soufflées, the twice-fried puffed slices, which share only the name. Stuffed and re-baked potatoes appear across late nineteenth-century American cookbooks under a variety of titles, and they could be assembled ahead of the final baking, a real advantage in a household serving a long sequence of courses.