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Breakfast Potatoes
Peel, cut in very thin slices into a very little boiling water, so little that it will be evaporated when they are cooked, add salt to taste, some cream, or a very little milk and a bit of butter. A little practice will make this a favorite dish in any family. The art is, to cook the potatoes with a very little water, so that it will be evaporated at the time the potatoes are done. They must be stirred occasionally while cooking.
A stovetop potato dish that lives or dies on water management: the pan must run nearly dry exactly as the slices turn tender, so the cream is not diluted.
- The hingeStart with about 1/4 cup water for a pound of thinly sliced potatoes, in a wide pan. Judge by sound and steam rather than the clock, and add water a spoonful at a time only if the pan goes dry early.
- Slice thickness"Very thin" here means about 1/8 inch, cut on a mandoline or with a steady knife. Uneven slices give you scorched thin edges and raw centres at the same moment.
- TimingSlices this thin are done in 8 to 12 minutes over medium heat. The original gives no time because the water level was the cook's timer.
- Potato choiceA waxy or all-purpose potato (Yukon Gold, red-skinned) holds its slices; russets will collapse once stirred. Either works, but choose deliberately.
- Cream quantity"Some cream, or a very little milk" is roughly 1/4 cup of heavy cream, or 2 to 3 tablespoons of milk, added at the end and warmed through for a minute. Cream thickens on contact with the starch; milk may break if boiled hard.
- StirringStir gently and not often. Too much agitation releases starch and turns the dish gluey rather than creamy.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 lb of potatoes serves four as a breakfast side. The book gives salt only as "to taste," without making the moment clear; finish with pepper if you like it.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) came out of Ohio Methodist church circles, compiled from the contributed recipes of many households, and this entry has the tone of a technique passed on rather than a formula measured out: no quantities, no times, just the principle and the assurance that "a little practice" will settle it. Creamed potatoes in some form appear commonly in American breakfast cookery of the late nineteenth century, when the morning meal was substantial and leftover boiled potatoes were often put to use; what distinguishes this version is that the potatoes are cooked raw in the small amount of liquid, so the starch they shed does the thickening and no flour or roux is needed. The instruction to evaporate the water precisely suits a cook working over a wood or coal range, where heat was adjusted by moving the pan rather than turning a dial, and where judging a nearly dry pan by ear and eye was an everyday skill.