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Mashed Potatoes
Boil until tender, drain dry, season with salt, and mash until not a lump remains; then add enough hot milk to make the right consistency, and a piece of butter. Mix lightly with a fork, heap in a dish and serve immediately. Do not place in an oven unless unavoidable, and do not smooth over with a knife or spoon. The delicacy of mashed potatoes is their lightness. -E. J. M.
A method rather than a formula: no quantities, no timings, just the technique that separates light mashed potatoes from paste. The instructions that matter here are the negative ones.
- The hinge: work them hot and work them littlePotatoes mash cleanly only while steaming hot; once cooled, the starch sets and the mash turns gluey. Mash first, then fold in the hot milk and butter with a fork in as few strokes as will combine them.
- Why not to smooth the topFlattening the surface with a knife compresses the mash and burnishes the starch, giving the dense, sticky sheen the recipe is warning against. Heaping it loosely keeps air in it.
- Why not the ovenHolding mashed potatoes in a warm oven dries the surface and continues to work the starch. If you must hold them, cover and set over barely simmering water for no more than 20 minutes.
- Quantities the original omitsReckon on 1/3 lb potatoes per person as a side dish. For 2 lb potatoes, about 1/2 cup hot milk and 3 to 4 tbsp butter is a reasonable starting point; add the milk in stages, since the amount depends entirely on the potato.
- Choose a floury potatoRussets and King Edwards mash light, and Maris Pipers are a serviceable all-rounder. Waxy new potatoes and many red-skinned varieties hold more moisture and resist breaking down, which is how mash becomes lumpy and then, from over-beating, gummy.
- "Drain dry"At minimum drain thoroughly; returning the potatoes to the dry hot pan for a minute so the surface water steams off answers the instruction well. Otherwise you get a loose, watery mash that no amount of butter fixes.
- Hot milk, not coldCold milk drops the temperature of the potatoes and stiffens them. Warm it in a small pan or the microwave first, as directed.
- Ricer or masher, not a processorA food mill or ricer gets rid of lumps with the least agitation. A blender or food processor shears the starch granules and produces something closer to wallpaper paste.
Mashed potatoes were already thoroughly domestic by the time this book appeared, and the entry reflects it: no cook of the period needed to be told how long to boil a potato, only how to avoid ruining it at the last minute. The initials at the end, "E. J. M.", reasonably suggest a contributed recipe, a format often associated with community and subscription cookbooks, where local women are said to have sent in the versions they made at home and been credited by initial or married name. What the contributor is really defending is a texture: nineteenth-century cookery writing returns repeatedly to the ideal of potatoes "light" and "snowy", set against the heavy, leaden mash that comes of too much handling. The advice against the oven suggests that keeping a finished dish warm cost you the very lightness the cook had worked for.