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Potato Cakes
Two pounds of mashed potatoes, two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt, two pounds of flour, and milk enough to make a batter, one-half cup of yeast; set it to rise and when light bake in cakes size of a muffin.
This is a yeast-raised potato bread baked in small rounds, not the fried leftover-mash patty the name suggests today. The dough is enormous by modern standards and the leavening is the part that needs translating.
- The half cup of yeastThat means half a cup of homemade liquid or "stock" yeast — a wet ferment, not granules. For the full batch, substitute roughly one 2 1/4-teaspoon packet of active dry yeast dissolved in a little warm water, and reduce the milk slightly to allow for the water.
- Scale downTwo pounds of potato with two pounds of flour makes roughly five pounds of dough, enough for two to three dozen cakes. Quartering it (8 oz mashed potato, 8 oz flour, 1/2 tablespoon butter, about 1/2 teaspoon yeast) gives six to eight.
- "Milk enough to make a batter"Take this loosely. With equal weights of flour and potato you want a thick, sticky dough you can scoop rather than a pourable batter — start with about 1/2 cup milk per pound of flour and add cautiously, since potato moisture varies.
- The potato matters mostUse dry, floury potatoes (russets) mashed while hot and cooled to lukewarm before mixing. Waxy potato turns the dough gluey, and mash much hotter than about 110-120F will begin to damage the yeast.
- "Set it to rise and when light"One rise until roughly doubled, 1 to 1 1/2 hours in a warm room; potato dough ferments briskly because the starch is already gelatinised. Shape into rounds, then let them puff again 20 to 30 minutes before baking.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes until the tops are browned and the cakes sound hollow. Greased muffin rings or a muffin tin give the intended shape.
- KeepingPotato in the crumb keeps these moist for two or three days, which was much of the point. They toast and split well, and stale ones reheat better than plain rolls.
Potato was worked into bread doughs long before it was fashionable to eat on its own — it stretched expensive wheat flour, held moisture so loaves staled slowly, and fed the yeast the sugars it needed. Household cookbooks of this period commonly give recipes for a jar of liquid yeast, often made with grated potato and hops, which is why a recipe like this measures leavening by the half cup rather than the spoonful. The instruction to "bake in cakes size of a muffin" suggests muffin rings on a griddle or in a hot oven, a usual way of turning a batch of soft dough into individual breads for tea or breakfast.