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Stuffed Potatoes
Bake 7 good-sized potatoes. When done, cut off a lengthwise slice; scoop out potato with a spoon. Mash; add 1 tablespoon Crisco, salt and pepper to taste, 1/2 cup milk, and 2 egg whites beaten stiff. Refill skins with this mixture. Pile lightly, do not smooth, bake until potatoes are puffed and brown.
A straightforward twice-baked potato, distinguished by whipped egg whites in place of extra fat. The recipe assumes you know your oven; here are the numbers it leaves out.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given at all. Bake the potatoes at 400-425F for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer slides through, then return the filled shells to the same heat for 15-20 minutes to puff and colour.
- CriscoThe book was published to sell Crisco, and one tablespoon of shortening for seven potatoes is a token amount. Butter gives a better result and the same quantity of any solid fat works.
- The hinge: fold, don't beatThe egg whites are the whole point of the dish, providing the lift instead of cream or cheese. Let the mashed potato cool to warm before folding them in, fold rather than stir, and get the shells into the oven at once.
- Milk quantityHalf a cup for seven potatoes is on the dry side by modern taste, and how dry depends on the variety. Floury potatoes such as russets will take more; add it gradually until the mash is stiff but not stodgy, since a loose mixture will not hold its peaks.
- Scooping the shellsLeave about a quarter inch of potato inside the skin. Scooped too clean, the shells collapse under the filling; the lengthwise cut in the original leaves a boat that is easier to fill than a halved potato.
- "Pile lightly, do not smooth"Worth taking literally. The rough peaks are what brown; a smoothed top bakes pale and flat.
- YieldSeven filled potatoes, so seven servings as a side dish, or four if served as the main course with a salad.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble in the 1910s, one of a series of cookbooks issued to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening introduced in 1911, in American kitchens. That accounts for the branded tablespoon of fat. The technique itself is older than the product, belonging to a broader nineteenth-century enthusiasm for soufflé and "puffed" preparations of the same family as potato croquettes and duchesse potatoes, where stiff egg white or yolk-enriched mash was used to make a cheap vegetable look like a course.