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Sweet Potato Souffles
Peel six even-sized, sound, dry sweet potatoes and neatly trim them into even squares; then cut them into lengthwise slices the thickness of a silver dollar and plunge them into hot but not boiling fat. Lightly turn with a skimmer and fry for seven minutes, occasionally turning them; remove, place in a frying basket and let cool off, then plunge again in boiling fat and continually turn while cooking for three minutes; remove, thoroughly drain, place on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
N. B. Sweet potatoes should never be washed when prepared this way, and special care should be taken to cut them in as near even slices as possible.
This is the puffed-potato technique — pommes soufflées — applied to sweet potatoes: a low first fry to cook the interior, a cooling rest, then a hot second fry that inflates each slice. The temperatures are the whole recipe.
- The two fat temperaturesThe recipe never gives numbers, only "hot but not boiling" and "boiling fat." In modern practice the first bath runs somewhere around 275-300F and the second around 375-400F. A thermometer helps, since the gap between the two stages is what makes the slices puff rather than simply brown.
- Slice thicknessA silver dollar of the period is about 2.4 mm thick, so roughly 3/32 inch. Even thickness matters more than the exact number - a mandoline gives the uniformity the note at the end is insisting on.
- Why not to wash themThe recipe is emphatic that the potatoes stay dry. Peel and trim them and wipe with a dry cloth; do not rinse or soak, and pat away any weeping moisture before frying.
- Sweet potatoes puff badlyExpect a lower success rate than with white potatoes. Sweet potatoes carry more sugar and moisture, so many slices will crisp flat instead of ballooning, and they scorch faster in the hot bath. Watch color closely in the three-minute stage.
- The cooling rest is not optionalThe recipe has the slices cool in the basket between the two fries, and that pause is part of the method rather than a convenience.
- Fat and quantityThe original does not specify the fat; lard or beef fat would have been usual in a kitchen of this date. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works; fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash when the potatoes go in.
- ServingThe recipe gives no yield beyond the six potatoes. The folded napkin is there to absorb fat and keep the slices from steaming - a rack over a sheet pan does the same job. Serve at once; they deflate quickly.
Puffed potatoes belong to the repertoire of nineteenth-century French restaurant cooking, and the trick is generally traced by tradition to the opening of the Paris–Saint-Germain railway in 1837, when a delayed dinner is said to have forced a cook to fry his potatoes twice. Whether or not that story holds, pommes soufflées were a standard show of technical skill in grand hotel and club kitchens by the time this book appeared.