Pommes de Terre Duchesse au Chester

Pommes de Terre Duchesse au Chester (Duchesse potato galettes with Chester cheese) teach one true thing: the paste must be cool and dry enough to hold a moulded edge before it meets the oven. Grated cheese runs through the potato, beaten egg gives the galettes their gild, and a thin Chester cap melts over the top. If the paste is warm, they slump; chill it and begin again. Ça se rattrape.

The original entry assumed Croquettes de Pommes de Terre (No. 2210) already prepared by another station, a tray filled for a dining room, and a fierce service oven ready for the last seven or eight minutes. At home, use one pound of that prepared mixture, a buttered metal sheet, and the upper third of a well-heated oven. That makes eight small galettes for four people: one cook, one stove, one evening.

The brigade's holding tray and extra hands are scaffolding and can go. The cheese ratio, the small galette shape, the egg gilding, and the thin slice of Chester on each one are the dish, so they stay exactly where the book puts them. Keep the mixture cold before you shape it. That decides whether the galettes arrive proud or spread into one very agreeable, but incorrect, potato blanket.