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Parsley Potatoes (Select smooth uniform-sized)
Select smooth, uniform-sized new potatoes; wash, scrape and cover with cold water. Let stand one hour; drain and place in steamer, cover closely and steam until soft. Remove to serving dish; dot over with bits of butter and sprinkle at once with coarse salt and finely chopped parsley.
A plain steamed potato dish that depends entirely on the quality of the potatoes and the timing. A few notes on what the original assumes.
- New potatoes"New" means freshly dug, thin-skinned potatoes that scrape rather than peel, sold in early summer. Small waxy potatoes — fingerlings, new reds, Yukon Gold marbles — behave the same way; a mature russet will not, since it goes mealy and falls apart in the steamer.
- The hour in cold waterHolding scraped potatoes in cold water keeps the cut surfaces from darkening before they reach the steamer, and is often said to help them hold their shape. It is not a substitute for cooking time, and a shorter soak will still prevent discolouring.
- Steaming timeExpect 15 to 25 minutes for potatoes of about 1½ inches, longer for larger. Test with a thin skewer at the thickest point rather than going by the clock; uniform size, as the recipe insists, is what makes a single test reliable.
- Coarse saltAt the time this meant rock or kitchen salt rather than the fine table salt of the shaker. Flaky sea salt or kosher salt gives the intended effect — visible crystals that season in bursts rather than dissolving away.
- Sprinkle at onceThe instruction is deliberate. Salt and parsley applied while the potatoes are still steaming and slightly damp will cling; on cooled, dried skins they slide off into the dish.
- ButterDotting cold butter over hot potatoes lets it melt down and coat as they are served. Roughly 2 tablespoons for 2 lb of potatoes, more if the potatoes are going alongside something plain.
- YieldThe original gives none. Allow about 6 oz of potatoes per person as a side dish — 2 to 2½ lb serves six.
Steaming rather than boiling was a point of pride in early twentieth-century American cookery, and books of this period return to it often: a steamer basket kept the potato from waterlogging and preserved a flavor that boiling was said to leach into the pot. The scraping is a seasonal marker efore their their skins have set, can be scraped with a knife instead of pared. Parsley here is the flat or curled garden herb, and the combination of butter, coarse salt and chopped parsley on new potatoes is old and widespread enough across northern European cooking that no single origin can be claimed for it; the dish is less an invention than a way of getting out of the way of a good potato.