Delmonico Potatoes – The True And Original Recipe

Citizens – I present for your gastronomic edification and delight this fantastically researched article about discovering the original, true recipe for Delmonico’s Potatoes! 😀

Delmonico potatoes are a delicious and classic recipe that is sadly and badly corrupted on the Web – for you, I present the real deal! 🙂

TFD has made one tiny change to the classic by garnishing with minced chives.

Battle on – The Generalissimo

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Delmonico potatoes

By JOE O’CONNELL, Food Writer
First posted 25 August 2001 at 1525 GMT
Last updated 30 November 2003 at 1702 GMT

NEW YORK, New York — Delmonico Potatoes are famous across the United States and around the world. The recipe for Delmonico Potatoes, perhaps the best, rarest and most desirable way to prepare potatoes, originated around 1830 at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City.

However, there is a little-recognized problem with “Delmonico Potatoes”: no one today (until now) seems to know the exact recipe for the authentic, original “Delmonico Potatoes.”

The recipe today differs from restaurant to restaurant and from cookbook to cookbook. This is unfortunate because the name originally applied to a very rare, tender and tasty steak that became world-famous in the 19th Century.

So, what is the authentic, original recipe for Delmonico Potatoes? The answer has been found and is presented here.

The Internet hoax:

Even a cursory search through cookbooks and the Internet will locate dozens of recipes for Delmonico Potatoes. They are varied and contain strange ingredients: rice, processed American cheese, onions, parsley, and many other ingredients unknown in the real recipe.

The same recipe is repeated in many websites, which contain the same introduction:

This recipe has been in my family for 100 years. The family legend was that it came from the Delmonico Hotel in New York, whose chef, Charles Ranhofer, had given it to my great-great grandfather under some circumstance in the 1880’s.

Of course, this sentence contains erroneous facts. Ranhofer never worked at the “Delmonico Hotel” but instead was chef at Delmonico’s Restaurant (a different institution at a different location) and, more importantly, Ranhofer did not create the recipe (as discussed below). This Internet hoax recipe contains the following eight ingredients:

potatoes
white rice
butter
flour
milk
salt
pepper
sharp cheddar cheese

A comparison of these ingredients with those of the authentic recipe (below) shows how different this recipe is from the original.

Writer’s Comment: It is shocking how many websites repeat variations of this incorrect recipe without any attribution or citation. It is also disappointing that some so-called authorities — head chefs and others — publish a recipe for “Delmonico Potatoes” that neither resembles the authentic recipe nor contains any disclaimer of “poetic license”. See, e.g., Head Chef Tony Nacopoulos recipe at Dining-Out.com.

Delmonico Potatoes:

The authentic, original recipe for Delmonico Potatoes has been discovered and is given below. However, the inventor of the recipe is not known with certainty, although it is certainly not Charles Ranhofer.

Unknown inventor:

The recipe for Delmonico Potatoes was developed by an unidentified cook.

The earliest known menu from Delmonico’s, dating from 1838, includes “Pommes de terre a la maitre d’hotel” (translated on the menu as “Fricasseed potatoes”).

Of course, the French pommes de terre means potatoes, and a la maitre d’hotel means literally “by the master of the house” and may be translated as the “the house specialty”.

That is, the item in English would be Delmonico Potatoes. The use of the English translation with the French word fricasseed is curious. Fricasseed in the Eighteenth Century meant “cut into pieces for stewing in a sauce” (in the modern definition, stewing evolved into sauteeing).

The recipe may have been created by John Lux, by Alessandro Filippini, by an unidentified cook at Delmonico’s, or even by an unknown cook in Paris.

Beginning in the 1830s, Lux was the chef de cuisine at Delmonico’s and was responsible for bringing the latest Parisian food creations to Delmonico’s. Steele at 46. Before 1850, Filippini started at Delmonico’s as a cook and rose to become the manager at the lower Broadway location. Filippini published the recipe for Delmonico Potatoes. Filippini, International, at 204 (recipe no. 718).

It is possible and even probable that the recipe was based on a recipe invented in Paris and then was developed and perfected at Delmonico’s.

. . . these Gallic inventions, when transferred to Delmonico’s kitchens, often proved superior to their prototypes at Paris, because Delmonico’s cooks considered themselves ambassadors charged with upholding the honor of their national cuisine; and in fulfilling this mission they were able to draw upon the greater abundance of fine foodstuffs available in America. Steele at 46.

The recipe for Delmonico Potatoes definitely was not developed by Charles Ranhofer, and it was not published in his seminal book, The Epicurean. Ranhofer could not have developed the recipe, because he did not join Delmonico’s until May, 1862, more than twenty years after Delmonico Potatoes first appeared on the menu at Delmonico’s.

Like the Delmonico Steak, Delmonico Potatoes were introduced to New Yorkers early in the Nineteenth Century. The Delmonico name and reputation spread across the United States and came to be synonymous with “the best”. Patrons in cities across America demanded that their chefs provide a “Delmonico Steak” and “Delmonico Potatoes”, and the chefs, who did not have the actual recipes, responded with inventions of their own.

Thus, “Delmonico Steak” came to mean one cut of beef in Chicago, another in New Orleans, and another yet in Denver and San Francisco. A similar fate befell “Delmonico Potatoes”.

Truth in history has now prevailed, as a result of research into primary sources. What remains is for the Internet community to update their websites and correct the misinformation about the “Delmonico Steak” and “Delmonico Potatoes”.