Home › A Calendar of Dinners › Potato Puff
Potato Puff
Prepare 2 1/2 cups hot mashed potato. Add 3/4 cup milk, 2 well-beaten yolks of eggs, 3 tablespoons Crisco, and salt and pepper to taste. Beat this well, then add beaten whites of 2 eggs. Pile lightly in Criscoed baking dish and bake until puffed and brown.
A soufflé-adjacent potato dish written for cooks who already knew how long a puff takes. The only real gaps are oven temperature and time.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Around 375-400F is a reasonable modern setting; expect 25-35 minutes, until risen and browned on top.
- CriscoThe book was published to sell it. Any neutral solid or liquid fat works: 3 tablespoons of butter gives a better flavour, and "Criscoed" simply means greased.
- Start with dry potatoWet mashed potato will not hold air. Boil or steam floury potatoes, drain thoroughly, and dry them in the pan for a minute before mashing or ricing. About 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of raw potatoes gives 2 1/2 cups mashed.
- Hot, then cooled a littleThe potato should be hot enough to absorb the milk and fat smoothly, but let the mixture drop to warm before the yolks go in or they will scramble in streaks.
- The whitesBeat to soft peaks, not stiff and dry, and fold rather than beat them in -- "pile lightly" is the instruction that matters. Stirring them through collapses the whole point of the dish.
- Dish sizeA 1 1/2-quart baking dish, filled no more than three-quarters. Bake immediately; the mixture will not wait on the counter.
- YieldServes four as a side, or two or three as a supper dish with a green salad. It sinks within a few minutes of leaving the oven, so carry it straight to the table.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, one of a series of cookbooks issued after Crisco went on sale in 1911 to persuade American cooks that a hydrogenated vegetable shortening could stand in for butter and lard in everything from pastry to fried fish. That is why a potato dish specifies Crisco twice. It belongs to a long line of English and American "puffs" -- any batter or purée lightened with beaten whites and baked until it rises.