Duchess Potatoes

Rich and fluffy, it’s really the artful presentation that makes these potatoes stand out. We wanted to keep the sophisticated spirit of the country clubs and ocean-liners that popularized this dish, but keep it accessible to the everyday cook. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• Boiling the potatoes made them waterlogged. Next we tried baking them, but they quickly dried out. We solved this problem by parcooking the potatoes in the microwave and finishing them in the oven on high heat.
• Piling butter into the hot potato mixture made it too soft to pipe into delicate mounds. Add some while it’s still hot, but wait to add the rest until it has cooled a bit. The result will be rich, buttery flavor throughout with small butter pockets scattered in the mounds.
• To keep the airy texture, we found some unexpected help in our baking cabinet.