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Creamed Potatoes
Cut cold boiled potatoes into cubes or thin slices; put them into a shallow pan covered with milk, and cook until the potatoes have absorbed nearly all the milk; to one pint of potatoes add a tablespoonful of butter, half a teaspoonful of salt, half a saltspoonful of pepper and a little chopped parsley.
A leftover-potato dish with no fixed milk quantity and no cooking time, which means the cook judges by the pan. The one thing to watch is the milk reducing over gentle heat rather than catching on the bottom.
- A pint of potatoesPotatoes here are measured by volume, not weight: one pint is 2 cups of cubes or slices, something like 10 to 12 oz of cooked potato, or about two medium boiled potatoes. That serves two as a side dish, three at a stretch.
- A saltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the pepper here is a scant eighth of a teaspoon. The salt at half a teaspoon per pint is on the generous side if the potatoes were boiled in salted water.
- How much milk"Covered with milk" for 2 cups of potato in a shallow pan will probably take somewhere around a cup, depending on the pan. Skim milk will reduce to something thin and watery; whole milk or milk with a splash of cream gives the clinging sauce the dish is named for.
- Heat and panUse a wide skillet or sauteuse over gentle heat. Milk scorches readily and the starch released by the potatoes settles to the bottom, so shake the pan or stir gently rather than leaving it alone. It may take fifteen to twenty minutes.
- Not quite all the milk"Nearly all" is the instruction that matters. Cook until a spoon drawn through leaves a brief track and the potatoes are bound, not dry; the starch thickens what remains into the sauce. Taken too far it turns pasty and there is nothing to add back.
- Butter and parsley lastStir the tablespoon of butter and the parsley in off the heat so the butter emulsifies into the milk instead of breaking, and the parsley keeps its colour.
- Why cold potatoesHot, freshly boiled potatoes are more likely to break up in the milk; cooked and thoroughly cooled, they firm up enough to hold their shape as cubes, which suits a dish that lends itself to yesterday's dinner.
Creamed vegetables were a fixture of American cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and the technique in this recipe is one of the simplest forms of it: no flour-thickened white sauce, just milk reduced against the starch the potatoes give up. Other household books direct the cook to make a cream sauce separately and pour it over, which is more reliable and less interesting. The dish belongs to the same thrifty impulse that produced potato cakes and hash.