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Potato Snow Flakes
Mash potatoes in the usual manner, putting in butter, milk and salt, then rub them through a colander, put them in a vegetable dish and place them in a heater until needed, as they are apt to cool a little in putting them through a colander.
A presentation trick rather than a new dish: mashed potato pushed through a colander falls in light threads that must not be stirred or pressed afterward.
- The hingeNever smooth or pat the potato once it has gone through the colander. The whole point is the loose, snowy pile of separate strands; a spoon flattens it back into ordinary mash.
- "Mash in the usual manner"For 2 lb of floury potatoes (russets or a similar baking type), figure roughly 3 tablespoons butter, 1/3 to 1/2 cup hot milk and a teaspoon of salt. Waxy potatoes will not break into flakes; they turn gluey under pressure.
- The colanderPeriod colanders were typically tinned and punched with round holes, generally coarser than a fine sieve. A wide-holed colander or a potato ricer set high over the serving dish gives much the same effect; a fine-mesh strainer will not.
- Work hot and quicklyThe author's own note is the practical one: the potatoes are apt to cool a little in being put through the colander. Warm the serving dish, and push the potato through directly over it so nothing is transferred twice.
- "A heater"Most likely a plate warmer or the warming closet of a range. Lacking one, a very low oven will hold the dish; keep it uncovered, as a lid traps steam and collapses the flakes.
- Yield2 lb of potatoes serves four to six as a supper vegetable, though the mounded flakes look like considerably more.
Potato snow was a familiar flourish of nineteenth-century English and American table service, appearing in household manuals under names such as "potato snow" and "snow potatoes." It belongs to a period when a cook's reputation rested partly on making plain food look composed: the same instinct produced piped duchesse potatoes and moulded rice borders. Floury potatoes were essential to the effect, and period cookery writing is generally specific about wanting mealy rather than new potatoes for such dishes.