Seeking recipe for "Salt Potatoes"

When I was in my pre to early teens, my family often went to dinner at a place near Syracuse, NY where they served a side dish that my Dad called Salt Potatoes. They were very small and round (but not red potatoes), very tender and very salty but not too salty. I was under the impression that they were boiled in a very salty brine but I really don't know.
Does anyone know how to prepare small potatoes so they come out like this?

Jon, salt potatoes are a regional dish from Central New York state -- a friend from Sydney introduced me to them several years ago. I think the salt mines in central New York probably inspired them.

In any event, bring a heavily salted water to a boil -- the water should be so saturated with salt that crystals that can't be absorbed lie on the bottom of the pan.

Clean small white potatoes without removing the skins, and boil until done -- three minutes, and then test -- you don't want them to overcook.

Serve hot with butter.

Regards, Bob

[Jenise]

There are salt mines in New York? Funny, there's nothing about New York state as I understand it from afar that allows room for that.

Oops, not mines, salt springs.

They used to dry the salty water and ship it along the Erie Canal down to New York City and to the Great Lakes. Syracuse was the main production location. Syracuse still calls itself the "Salt City", and you see "salt" in a number of business names in the area.

I read a geological paper that argued that the salt brines might run under the Finger Lakes -- I've meant to look into whether if true that might affect grape vines in the area.

Jon, Bob is right on as to method. We used to have these all the time when I was a kid in western New York. It was almost a default side with roast chicken.

Bob, while indeed there are salt springs near Syracuse, there is in fact a rock salt mine close to Mt. Morris, which is at the upper end of Letchworth State Park.

Right, Cynthia. I confused Syracuse with Wyoming County further west in New York state, where Morton has one of its largest salt mines.

It's always surprising to me that Michigan is one of the largest salt producers -- the mine under Detroit is a fascinating place to visit.

Syracuse? Interesting to learn. Salzkartoffeln or salt potatoes, the standard side dish of central Europe, are served eagerly (with Gulasch or Tafelspitz or fish) in half the restaurants of Austria and a third of those in Germany. (Once you cross the facetiously named Rösti-Grenze border inth Switzerland, on the other hand, you move into the land of Rösti.) The Syracuse area has considerable immigrant history from Germany and thereabouts (not excluding the usual religious groups that set up enclaves in the New World) which might explain the dish's association there.

Some international discussions a few years ago of Viennese cuisine (where that dish remains especially mainstream) and in particular its cookbooks are available Here and Here. Also, one of the best-known food-wine editors of central Europe, Michael Prónay -- whom I knew for his magazine work for a decade before I saw him online -- contributes to the wine forum here (as to many others) and would know far more on this subject than I do.

Duch's Austrian reference cookbook says simply to boil potatoes (cut up into uniform pieces, if large) in salt water. Uually on their home turf I've seen them as small, maybe new, potatoes.

I found the title of this book irresistible on a trip to Corning awhile back; it contains a recipe and some other uses of salt potatoes: Home Plate: The Traveler's Food Guide to Cooperstown and Otsego County, NY, by Brenda Berstler

Thank you, Bob. I don't think I would have used enough salt but for your post.

Home Plate: The Traveler's Food Guide to Cooperstown and Otsego County, NY, by Brenda Berstler

-- saying that salt potatoes originated in Syracuse, New York.

Now who's going to tip off those poor Europeans that one of their favorite uses of potatoes actually came from New York State? Not I.

"Now who's going to tip off those poor Europeans that one of their favorite uses of potatoes actually came from New York State?"

I wonder if any Europeans care, Max. The City of Syracuse claims:

"Salt potatoes are to Syracuse what chicken wings are to Buffalo-a regional specialty identified with an upstate city. Salt potatoes were invented in the 1800's by local salt workers who boiled small potatoes, skins and all, in brine for an inexpensive lunch. The tasty taters are still enjoyed today; their salt-encrusted skins dipped in melted butter before eating."

The great majority of the salt workers were Irish, attracted to New York State to work on the Erie Canal, and staying in the Syracuse area to work on the salt pans.

The priority claim is at least a century old:

10/09/02 Syracuse New Times: "Few people outside Syracuse know of those delightful nuggets invented at the height of the local salt industry: salt potatoes. In fact, salt potatoes are to Syracuse what chicken wings are to Buffalo... It's Syracuse's blue-collar roots that led to the invention of salt potatoes. Local salt workers, many of them Irish, toiling along Solar Street and Onondaga Lake, evaporated salt from water by boiling the brine in large vats. Since the water was hot anyway, they plunked small tubers into the brine for a cheap lunch.Today, no clambake would be complete without a half-dozen or so salt potatoes, accompanied by butter for dipping. It's no accident that Hinerwadel's, that North Syracuse home of sumptuous clambakes, packages salt potatoes in five-pound bags for sale in grocery stores to be enjoyed at home."

Of course, many dishes originate in different places with no necessary interaction between the places.

Now this is getting historically interesting. Time to ask some European heavyweights. As I mentioned another time, one of them already visits the wine forum (Michael Prónay, editor of Falstaff, Vinaria, etc.). Another is Christoph Wagner, food historian (editor of the Austrian Gault-Millau and author of the 1995 history of fast food; it was Wagner who told me last decade he'd firmly established when potatoes actually surfaced first in his part of Europe -- considerably predating Parmentier and therefore conventional wisdom). Let me see what I can do.

I've just been guessing that (current writings notwithstanding) they were a traditional dish brought to the Syracuse area by immigrants and the exact history forgotten. (The number of such cases is legion.)

"I've just been guessing that (current writings notwithstanding) they were a traditional dish brought to the Syracuse area by immigrants and the exact history forgotten. (The number of such cases is legion.)"

I would have thought you were right, Max, until I did a bit of research. The Irish/potato/salt vat connection though is certainly plausible for an independent "invention" by blue collar [typo corrected in original by poster] folks in the Syracuse.

I'm also impressed that the dish is so regional -- I've never seen potatoes prepared this way in other areas, and in particular in German dominated areas in Wisconsin or New York City. It seems to be quite regional in central New York.

There are a number of recipes for "Syracuse Salt Potatoes" in cookbooks in the 1900 -- 1915 era -- easy to find on Google Books. So they've been around for awhile.

I'm looking forward to your results as well. So far, Salzkartoffeln recipes I've found haven't been limited to new potatoes, skins on, and white, not red. Those seem to be fundamental to the classic "Syracuse Salt Potatoes".

Regards, and good hunting. Bob

Thanks for the laurel, Max, but I am in no way a specialist in cuisine or cuisine history. I have always been a wine guy, so I'm terribly sorry that I cant contribute anything here.

Christoph Wagner, otoh, is THE authority in cuisine history in German language.

(Once you cross the facetiously named Rösti-Grenze border inth Switzerland, on the other hand, you move into the land of Rösti.)

Max, I don't think there is such a thing as a "Rösti-Grenze". All I know is the "Röschti-Graben" which separates germanophone Switzerland from francophone (Romandie).

Thanks, I will see what I can find. I believe that if anyone spends some time in central Europe paying attention to the everyday food, they will notice how familiar salt potatoes are, how much an accepted part of cuisine. Almost like baked potatoes in the US, as a rough parallel. Without that particular experience, the issue here may not jump out so strongly. N. American readers unacquainted with European Salzkartoffeln might try the following thought experiment. Please don't focus on details but on the overall sense of it. Corn-on-the-cob is a longtime seasonal North-American specialty. Suppose you went to a far-away place and found a community where corn-on-the-cob was cherished, and labeled a local invention. Imagine further that you know this community somewhat, know people there, and have seen and heard about a long history of immigrants from North America. You might be intrigued about a connection, no?

Max, I don't think there is such a thing as a "Rösti-Grenze". All I know is the "Röschti-Graben" ...

I thought you might have heard it, as I have, in Europe. I believe I've heard Germans refer loosely to the Swiss border as Rösti-Grenze. As you probably know, the potato dish is spelled both Rösti and Röschti in Switzerland. In fact, I made some for breakfast today.Examples of the idiom.

* Remarkably and helpfully, the cookbook Die Österreichische Küche ("nach Rokitansky," ed. Istvan) includes an Austrian-German-Swiss food dictionary. Some foods have different idiom. Examples: Backwerk / Kleingebäck / Guetzli; Indian / Truthahn / Truthahn. [Note: That's a footnote to something I edited out from the draft, but I left the footnote because it's useful reference information.]

Max,

what you say about Germans using "Rös(ch)ti-Grenze" very much makes sense to me. But I have never heard it in Austria — maybe because the Arlberg marks the borderline between common Austrian dialects (all variants of "bairisch") and Vorarlberg, Austria's westernmost province, where they speak an alemannic dialect close to Swiss German/Schwiizerdütsch.

A couple of references on the net suggest that Syracuse Salt Potatoes were developed by Hinerwadel during the 1930s. March 2007: Robin Augello notes that the "famous salt potatoes were not invented during the heyday of salt production but in the 1930's by a local business, Hinerwadel's, for the seasonal clambakes they hosted."

The local salt museum claims:

"In the 1700s & 1800s, perhaps even earlier, this Salt plant produced almost all of the nations salt. Add the salt production to the Erie Canal and you can see what a prosperous location Syracuse was during that time. Water taken from the Onondaga Lake was boiled down, or set out in the sun for evaporation in huge bowls. As most of the workers were Irish they brought along their potatoes for their meals and would place the potatoes in the boiling vats to cook giving you the famous salt potatoes. Syracuse is well known for its salt potatoes to this day! (Nowadays all they are, are very small potatoes boiled whole with the skins on in very salty water. 4 lbs potatoes to 1 lb of salt). Eat these dipped in melted butter and you have a great treat. By the 1870s this way of making salt was obsolete and the factory folded. "

The museum, salt potatoes, and the Hinerwadel claim can be found on the Roadside America site.

There is some documentary evidence to support the Salt Museum's story, including this recipe from a book published in 1902:

SYRACUSE HOT SALT POTATOES (THE CATERER)

Select potatoes of medium size and smooth skin and scrub clean; have ready a kettle of brine at the boiling point; put in potatoes, cover and boil until tender; remove from the water and drain. Serve at once. The outside will be covered with salt crystals and the inside will be white and mealy.

Practical Cooking and Serving: A Complete Manual of how to Select, Prepare and Serve Food, By Janet McKenzie Hill, Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, 1902.


A description of the work involved in making salt, and of the work force in the 1860's can be found in this 1863 book studying ways that women could make money in that era:

A gentleman in the salt business at Geddes, N. Y., writes : "There used to be employed far more women than now in making bags to hold dairy or bag salt. Now, sewing machines
have entirely superseded them in this branch of our business. During the summer season, formerly, there were from one hundred to three hundred women at bag making. There are now, say one hundred or more women engaged in packing and filling the barrels with salt. They are all foreigners. It is dirty, heavy, and laborious work, and not suitable for women, but is extremely healthy. No difference is made in the price paid men and women, all being paid by the piece, and earning from 75 cents to $1 per day. A strong woman can learn very soon. The amount of work, probably, will not change much in future. The work is done only in the summer season. A large proportion of all the salt made in this country is made here. The annual product of our salt springs is about seven million bushels salt, produced at an expense for labor of not less than ten cents per bushel. Nearly all is paid to men, Irish and Dutch getting the most of it. A very small part of the work, if any, is adapted to women. Most of our women workers are the wives or mothers of men and boys I who fasten hoops on barrels. Most of the salt at Syracuse, N. Y., is made by boiling down the water that springs from artesian wells. At Turk's Island, salt is made by simply digging vats in the meadow and throwing the water into them. As it rarely rains there for a number of months, they require no covering to their works, and have only to take out the salt and stack it up when it is made."

The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work / by Virginia Penny, 1863.

***

Other references pre-dating the 1930s include:

344. POTATOES SYRACUSE

Select potatoes of medium size and smooth skin and scrub clean; have ready a kettle of brine at the boiling-point; put in potatoes, cover, and boil until tender; remove from the water, and drain. Serve at once. The outside will be covered with salt crystals, and the inside will be white and mealy.

May Byron's Vegetable Book: Containing Over 750 Recipes for the Cooking and Preparation of Vegetables, By May Clarissa Gillington Byron, 1916.

The Great Iron Trail: The Story of the First Transcontinental Railroad By Robert West Howard writes that according to their diary, surveyors of the railroad "ate salt potatoes in a Syracuse inn." [Check date: 1850s?.]

Crossroads in Time: An Illustrated History of Syracuse
By Dennis J. Connors, page 28, indicates that in the 1820s and 1830s there were "modest number of Irish Catholic salt workers at Salinas." Page 67. There was a larger influx of Irish and German immigrants in the late 1840s.

Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, By Bernstein, Peter L. 2006: "Many of the salt workers [in the Syracuse area] were Irish, who introduced both potatoes and corn soaked in salt into the local diet. These dishes are still a local specialty in Syracuse." Page 190.

Bernstein cites an authority at footnote 17, but that footnote is not part of the online preview. [The Bergen County system has the book available, and on its way to me.]

Hinerwadel was involved in a trademark suit with Rapasadi & Sons over salt potatoes; this article has some interesting history, not directly relevant to the origin of the dish. It does say that Hinerwadel was founded in 1914, well after the Syracuse Hot Salt Potatoes recipe published in 1902. http://www.cnybj.com/fullstory.cfm?arti ... ntpage.cfm

The suit has been settled: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... _n17190636

A local IGA store will ship the Hinerwadel potatoes:
https://secure3.nyhost.net/~hannibaliga ... ucts_id=30

Hinerwadel's website: http://hinerwadelsinc.com/

Note: I'm collecting these references, partly for the fun learning about the Erie Canal and Syracuse, but partly to send on to the Salt Museum so that the Syracuse Salt Potato will be credited properly and not ceded without a fight to a commercial enterprise.]

That's exceptional scholarship for which I've only admiration. (I suspect we could have a good talk some time about cooking history and cultures, Bob. I have some interesting sources which I occasionally put to valuable use.)

My argument isn't with the past writings within their scope.

This situation reminds me of other cases of writing that's authoritative within its boundaries, but overlooks relevant context outside those boundaries. For instance, online US fora lately explore pousse-café cocktails (rediscovered once again) with many details of multilayered multicolored drinks, but no mention that the phrase has a broader, and more common, meaning without layers. Likewise, in-depth writing on the New Orleans beignet pastry that doesn't recognize the conflict with the more common, worldwide sense of beignet (let alone mentioning that the New Orleans version resembles what in some older US cookbooks were called "dough nuts" before the annular shape caught on). Show me someone who pictures a fried dough piece, like a differently-shaped donut, on hearing beignet; I'll show you someone who hasn't perused French cookbooks, even in translation.

Pousse-café link.

So: Why do accounts of Syracuse salt potatoes lack even brief reference to the European version, given (1) the latter spans styles embracing the Syracuse type (skins, salt crystals); (2) the idiomatic name is exactly the same; (3) Europeans consume easily a thousand times more "salt potatoes" than residents of the Syracuse area. (I referee scholarly papers, and if those writings were sent to me, I would urge at least some mention.)

Keeping in mind that not everyone has the luxury of traveling at will, still, show me a person who doesn't spot this omission and I'll show you someone who hasn't dined observantly in Central Europe.

Good points, Max.

I'm going to take a course next week at the Culinary Institute and plan to do some research on original sources. or at least on the original sources in their considerable library.

There is an opposite risk, of course, and that is that people from a culture where say pyramids were very well known, ascribe pyramids in another culture from the very same source.

For many years, scientists posited an Egyptian migration to Central America to explain the Mayan pyramids. We now believe that the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Maya made the invention independently.

In any event, a fun quest and at the very least I've been able to disprove the assertion: ""famous salt potatoes were not invented during the heyday of salt production but in the 1930's by a local business, Hinerwadel's, for the seasonal clambakes they hosted." For starters, Hinerwadel itself claims that their clambackes started in 1914. And, that the Hinerwadel package asserts too much with it's claim "The Original Salt Potato".

Regards,

Believe you me,* I know about leaping to obvious, and wrong, conclusions.** It is not limited to pyramids. (Alas.)

To some matters raised, partly on the Varietal thread (and I agree this belongs here rather than there), two more points.

1. I've no idea of the geographical scope of "salt potatoes" overseas. I know their popularity in middle Europe but they may easily be in other places -- Ireland for one offhand example.

2. You surely know this Bob, but it's worth bringing out in any public discussion of "German and Dutch immigrant" history in North America that the word "Dutch" carries an older broad meaning of Germanic peoples in general, and this loose usage was popular in the New World to the extent that most populations nicknamed "Dutch" were actually German. It's even mentioned in some US regional cookbooks. Nederlanders point this out to me too, highlighting the word deutsch (as Germans call themselves) and its easy conversion to "Dutch" by English-speakers.

* Wonderful Germanic phrase by the way

** "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- Mencken

Max, the one point I keep meaning to make -- I don't see "salt potatoes" as a recipe in the German American cookbooks that I'm familiar with. There were a number available in southern Wisconsin where I grew up, particularly in the Milwaukee/Racine area. Church groups, etc.

My grandmother gave me a copy of this book, which is referred to in an old book sellers catalog I found on Google Books; but didn't find the recipe in it.

German Cookery Price $1.25 By H. Davidis. (536 pages, printed in both German and English.) 1902.

A new American edition of the most famous of all German cook books. Thirty-five editions of this book have been sold in Germany. It is addressed primarily to the household, but it is equally valuable to the steward or chef who wishes an insight of genuine German cookery. There is such a large German and German-American population in so many cities that a knowledge of the typical German dishes is always an advantage and often a necessity ; and in this book you have them all from "suppen" to "kuchen."

The receipts are classified by courses—soups, fish, meat dishes, salads, cakes and pastry, etc.—carefully indexed both in German and English (with full titles in both languages) so as to make reference very easy.


I've also checked elsewhere on Google Books, and don't see any German cookbook examples in English clearly describing the "Syracuse Salt Potato" recipe that appears in at least four other cookbooks in the 1890-1920 era. I'll have a good time checking some actual cook books this week in New Hyde Park.

[Incidentally, some of the German/American cookbooks describe a number of recipes using potato flour, which I rarely see nowadays; see for example German Cookery for the English Kitchen, By Ella Oswald, 1906.

On the Dutch/German front, we live in Bergen County, and it is almost impossible to confuse German and Dutch names and places; and of course the Dutch were very important in New York history. In other parts of the US the two were sometimes confused -- perhaps intentionally, especially during World War I as a protective matter. I wonder how prevalent that was in the Syracuse area?

Incidentally, this book is a wonderful history of how important the Dutch were in New York City, and indeed US history, based primarily on official city records: The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America

Max, the one point I keep meaning to make -- I don't see "salt potatoes" as a recipe in the German American cookbooks that I'm familiar with.

I'm afraid the only German-American cookbook I have some knowledge of is the original Joy of Cooking, family recipes from canned food, assembled as a fund-raiser if I recall (the title became a series of more serious cookbooks with content much broader than the original).

A new American edition of the most famous of all German cook books. ... indexed both in German and English (with full titles in both languages) so as to make reference very easy.

N.B., A standard modern German cookbook for US readers (indexed both in German and English), still in print at last check, is Mimi Sheraton's The German Cookbook (Random House, 1965). I looked in it; generic "salt potatoes" are the first potato recipe. Scharfenberg's Cuisines of Germany, another modern classic, published in Germany and the US (and by the way extremely worth getting for its cultural quips and unashamed presentation of traditional folk dishes at a time, the author said, when Germans were dismissing them for fashionable "Nouvelle Cuisine") mentions them only in passing and not by that name. The nation giving salt potatoes more emphasis in cookbooks I've read (and maybe more salt -- it's where I've seen salt crystals) is Austria, I linked to international discussions of several cookbooks Upthread.

It's very evident that a technique was popularized around Syracuse, was attributed to sources there, and entered local tradition. Anyway that's been my assumption throughout this thread. I wonder mainly if some household's tradition from the old world -- there may have been many households with the tradition -- was the original, unrecorded spur; this may never be known.* And, as I've said, why modern accounts don't mention that "salt potatoes" are commonplace in central Europe.

On the Dutch/German front ... In other parts of the US the two were sometimes confused -- perhaps intentionally, especially during World War I

Yes there's an extensive history, predating 1900 and I think even before 1800. I saw authoritative writing (God knows where) showing the confusion as widespread in earlier America, in fact I think I've read 19th-c. sources that did so directly. (Rather as some transplanted religious sects, circa Pennsylvania, still speak of the rest of the US as the "English.")

* As, for example, there've long been three standard, conflicting legends on the origin of the "Martini" cocktail, all with convinced supporters and at least one local city plaque proclaiming the spot of origin, according to Conrad's 1995 book on the subject. To borrow from Abraham Lincoln, all three theories may be, but two of the three must be, mistaken.

"Yes there's an extensive history, predating 1900 and I think even before 1800. I saw authoritative writing (God knows where) showing the confusion as widespread in earlier America, in fact I think I've read 19th-c. sources that did so directly."

Max, do you know how immigrants to the US from what is now Germany referred to themselves before 1871? I wonder if some of the confusion arose from the relatively late unification of Germany as a single nation state.

Thanks for the references to the German and Austrian cookbook sources.

Regards, Bob