Peel and boil potatoes well seasoned; then mash thoroughly with a lump of butter. Add some milk and 2 eggs; beat well until very light. Then fry in deep hot lard by the tablespoonful until a light brown. Serve hot with broiled steak.
A one-line recipe with no quantities, which is typical of the daily-page format. The proportions matter more than the method here, since the mixture has to be stiff enough to hold its shape in hot fat.
- Working quantitiesThe original gives none. About 2 lb of floury potatoes, 2 tablespoons butter, 2 eggs and only 2 to 3 tablespoons of milk will produce a mixture that holds together. Serves four as a side dish.
- The hinge: keep it dry"Add some milk" is the line that ruins the dish. Too much and the spoonfuls slacken and disintegrate in the fat. Add milk a spoonful at a time and stop while the mash is still stiff enough to mound on a spoon.
- Potato choiceUse a floury variety — russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy potatoes go gluey when mashed and beaten, and the puffs will be dense.
- "Well seasoned"The phrasing most likely points to salting the cooking water rather than seasoning at the end, though the original is ambiguous. Either way, season the water and taste the mash before the eggs go in, since cooked potato takes up salt less readily.
- Fat and temperatureLard fries beautifully and is still sold, but any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. The original gives no temperature; by modern practice "deep hot lard" is around 350-375F -- below that the puffs soak up fat, above it they brown before the centre sets.
- Beating the eggs inLet the mash cool to warm before adding the eggs, or they will scramble in it. "Beat well until very light" is doing real work, lightening the mixture, though much of the puff in the fat comes from steam and the egg setting.
- Frying in batchesDrop by the tablespoonful and fry no more than five or six at a time; crowding drops the oil temperature. They take roughly two to three minutes to reach light brown, and may turn themselves once the underside sets -- turn any that do not.
- ServingThey deflate as they cool, so send them straight from the pan. The suggested broiled steak is period-appropriate, but they suit any roast or grilled meat with pan juices.
Potato puffs of this kind -- mashed potato bound with egg and dropped into hot fat -- belong to the broad family of dishes built on cooked potato, of which the croquette is the more formal French cousin. Note that this version starts from potatoes boiled for the purpose rather than from leftovers. The "Irish" label is doing national shorthand rather than culinary history: the potato was firmly bound to Ireland in the popular mind, and a book offering a dish from a different nation every day of the year needed exactly that kind of quick association -- the neighbouring pages give German and Belgian egg dishes. The technique itself is older and more widespread than the name suggests.