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Scalloped Potatoes
Slice raw potatoes thin; place in a pudding dish; after each layer, pepper, salt and butter; when the dish is full, pour in a cup of cream or milk; [164] bake nearly an hour a nice brown. Dredge flour over each layer except the top one. Butter the dish well before using.
A compact set of directions that assumes a cook already knows the dish. The proportions are left open, so the two things worth fixing are the oven temperature and the amount of liquid.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350°F for a covered start, uncovering for the last 20 minutes to get the "nice brown" the recipe asks for. Much hotter and the milk will break before the potatoes soften.
- Slice thickness"Thin" means about 1/8 inch, thin enough to bend without snapping. A mandoline gives even slices, which matter here: uneven slices are a common cause of some pieces being done while others are still half-raw.
- A cup of liquid is the minimumFor a standard 8-by-8 or 9-inch round dish holding roughly 2 lb of potatoes, one cup barely reaches halfway. Add liquid until it comes just to the top layer of potatoes without submerging it. Cream browns better than milk; whole milk is the leaner reading of the original.
- The flour dredgeThis is the thickener, standing in for a made sauce. Use about a teaspoon per layer, sifted or shaken over evenly. Clumps of dry flour turn into pale lumps that never hydrate.
- Waxy or starchyRussets shed starch and thicken the dish further but can go mealy; Yukon Gold holds its shape and slices cleanly. Do not rinse the sliced potatoes, the surface starch is working for you here.
- "Pudding dish"In this period simply a deep earthenware or ovenproof baking dish, not a mould. Any 2-quart casserole works. Butter it well as instructed, the milk solids will catch otherwise.
- TimingNearly an hour is right for a shallow dish, but test with a knife tip at the centre rather than by the clock. Deep dishes can want 75 to 90 minutes. Let it stand 10 minutes before serving so the starch sets.
- YieldAbout six side servings from 2 lb of potatoes.
The name "scalloped" is sometimes traced to the Middle English collop, a slice or small cut of meat, though it is at least as often derived from the scallop shell in which such dishes were once baked; the etymology is not settled. The technique was applied to oysters and to cold cooked meats as well as to sliced vegetables. What is notable in this version is the absence of a made white sauce: the flour is dredged dry between the layers and left to thicken the milk in the oven, an approach that turns up in nineteenth-century household books and one that leaves the cook to judge the liquid by eye.