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French Fried Potatoes
The potatoes are cut in long strips like macaroni, excepting that the sides are square instead of round. They are thrown into boiling lard, sprinkled with salt as soon as done, and served at once.
A four-line recipe that assumes you already know how to manage a kettle of hot fat. The gaps worth filling are temperature, the state of the cut potato before it goes in, and why a single frying rarely gives the result the book is describing.
- The temperature is the whole recipe"Boiling lard" is a figure of speech; fat does not boil, it smokes. Aim for 325-350F for the first cooking and 375F for the finish. Below 300F the strips absorb fat and go limp, above 400F lard begins to break down and taste scorched.
- Fry twiceThe period text implies one pass, and one pass at a single temperature gives either a pale soft chip or a browned one still raw at the centre. Blanch at 325F until tender and barely coloured, drain, rest, then return to 375F to colour and crisp.
- Rinse and dry the cut potatoesSurface starch makes strips stick together and darken unevenly. Rinse in cold water until it runs clear, then dry thoroughly on a towel; wet potatoes dropped into hot fat spatter violently and can make an over-filled kettle boil over.
- The cut"Like macaroni... square instead of round" means roughly a quarter-inch baton, thinner than most restaurant fries today. Cut them evenly or they will not finish at the same moment.
- LardRendered leaf lard is still sold and fries beautifully at these temperatures, with a smoke point around 370-390F depending on how well it is refined. Refined peanut or beef dripping behave similarly; unrefined lard with milk solids in it will smoke early.
- Salt at once, and only thenThe instruction to salt "as soon as done" is not decorative. Salt sticks to the film of hot fat on the surface and will slide off a cooled chip. Drain on paper, salt immediately, serve immediately.
- Quantity and batchesReckon one medium potato per person as a garnish, two as a side. Fry in small batches; crowding the kettle drops the fat temperature sharply and produces the greasy result the recipe is trying to avoid.
Deep-fried potato strips appear in English and American cookbooks through the second half of the nineteenth century under a shifting set of names -- French fried, pommes frites -- with "French" often taken to signal the technique of frying in deep fat rather than any specific national origin; the popular attributions to Paris or Brussels street vendors of the early 1800s are tradition rather than documented fact. The brevity of the entry suggests the method needed little explanation to a cook who kept a kettle of lard on the stove.