Woah Nellie!
Move over cauliflower crust. Duchess Potatoes could lead to a new ‘potato crust’ craze
by Mary Jo David
Growing up, my family sat down to a home-cooked meal every night, and that meal generally consisted of a meat, a vegetable, a salad, and a starch—and by starch, I mean potatoes! Sure, there was the occasional pasta or rice, but more often than not, we had some form of spuds—mashed, baked, parslied, or the requisite French fries or potato chips to go with our Saturday night chili dogs. Amazingly, none of us ever got tired of potatoes.
I’m not alone in my love for all things potato. It turns out, lots of famous people love potatoes—Dolly Parton, Trisha Yearwood, Mary J. Blige, and Mr. T to name a few. So when it came time to pick this month’s recipe from the late Nellie Maxwell’s syndicated column that ran in the Stockbridge Brief-Sun 100 years ago, it’s not surprising that I went searching for a potato recipe. I landed on Duchess Potatoes (see recipe clipping).
Nowadays if you Google “Duchess Potatoes” you’ll find fancy-looking individual servings that have been ornately piped with a large star decorator tip and then baked. But our Nellie was a practical cook, and to her, Duchess Potatoes were about the addition of an egg to the mash, not about piping them into rosettes.
Nellie was very specific about boiling a pint of mashed potatoes for this recipe. That required just over four medium russets. I added the egg, butter and milk, per her instructions, and although I used salted butter, I made the executive decision to also add salt and fresh-ground pepper, crushed rosemary (less than 1/8 of a teaspoon), and the same amount of poultry seasoning.
Where this recipe turned dicey was at the instructions for turning the potato mixture out onto a pastry board, shaping it flat and smooth, then cutting it into squares and moving those squares to a greased baking sheet. To this I say, “No way!” I first tried turning the mixture onto a wooden board, then onto my lightly floured countertop, and even onto wax paper. But every time I attempted to move the individually cut squares to the cookie sheet they landed like a pile of mush.
Finally, I simply spread the mixture onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, sprinkled colby jack cheese on top, and cut the large rectangle into squares without moving them. Into the oven they went, but I couldn’t help noticing my Duchess Potatoes were looking a lot like a deep-dish potato-crust pizza.
Alas, Nellie took to her grave with the recommended oven temperature for this recipe, so I did some more Googling and decided on a 375-degree oven. If I waited for the potatoes to turn a delicate brown, I’m afraid I’d still be waiting. So, after a 25-minute bake, I turned the oven broiler on low until the potato top turned a nice golden brown. After cooling for about 5 minutes, I re-cut the rectangle slices because the potatoes had puffed up, and my original cuts were no longer visible.
Upon tasting a portion, I came to the conclusion that Duchess Potatoes taste a lot like potato pierogi, even though there is no dough on the outside.
But my work here is never complete until I hear from my husband, the official taste tester, who, after a moment of thought, declared that Duchess Potatoes taste like … (wait for it) … potato pierogi! He also mentioned he thinks this recipe is the best of the nine recipes I’ve tried from Nellie’s collection. And as A.A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh stories, once said, “If a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow!” So, I think I’ll keep him!
Current photos by Mary Jo David
