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Baked Potatoes (Wash and scrub)
Wash and scrub with a vegetable brush eight uniform-sized potatoes. Place in dripping pan, and bake in hot oven forty-five minutes, turning when half done. Take up each potato with a towel and press gently to crack the skins. Put a half teaspoon butter in each potato and serve at once.
A four-line recipe with one real instruction buried in it: crack the skins the moment the potatoes leave the oven. Everything else is timing and choosing the right potato.
- Hot ovenIn books of this vintage "hot" is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F. At that heat a medium russet takes 45-60 minutes; test with a skewer rather than trusting the clock.
- The hinge: crack them at oncePressing the potato in a towel to split the skin lets steam escape, which is what keeps the interior floury rather than dense and sodden. Left whole, the trapped steam soaks back into the flesh.
- Which potato"Uniform-sized" is so that all eight are done at the same moment. Use russets or another high-starch baking potato of roughly equal weight; waxy red or new potatoes will not go fluffy however long they bake.
- Dripping panThat is the shallow roasting pan that sat under a joint. Any rimmed baking sheet works. Set the potatoes directly on it with space between them, not touching, or the undersides steam.
- No foil, no oilThe recipe puts nothing on the skins, and that is correct for a crisp result. Foil traps moisture and gives you a steamed potato; a light rub of salt is the only worthwhile addition.
- Butter quantityHalf a teaspoon per potato is modest by current habit. Serve additional butter at the table rather than doubling it inside, since a large lump cools the potato and pools.
- YieldEight potatoes serves eight as a side dish alongside a roast.
Baking potatoes in their skins is far older than the cookbook that records it, but the vegetable brush in the first line suits its moment: by the turn of the twentieth century American household advice increasingly favoured scrubbing root vegetables rather than paring them. 52 Sunday Dinners is organised as complete weekly menus rather than a general collection, so a recipe this plain earns its place by fitting a dinner built around a roast, cooking in the same hot oven at the same time. The towel-and-press trick is still the single best thing anyone has said about a baked potato.