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Potatoes in Jackets
Bake as many potatoes as are needed; when done, take off a little piece from one end to permit them to stand, from the other end cut a large piece, remove carefully the inside, and rub through a fine sieve, or mash thoroughly; put on the fire with half an ounce of butter and one ounce of grated cheese to every four fair-sized potatoes; and add boiling milk and pepper and salt as for mashed potatoes; fill the potato shells, and sprinkle over mixed bread-crumbs and grated cheese; and put in hot oven and brown. Many prefer to omit cheese and bread-crumbs, filling the shells heaping full and then browning.
A twice-baked potato under an older name, and the method holds up unaltered. Only the vagueness of the oven and the weight-based dairy need translating.
- Baking the shellsBake at 400F for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer meets no resistance. Rubbing the skins with a little oil or fat gives shells sturdy enough to be hollowed and refilled.
- Ounces to spoonsHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon, and one ounce of grated cheese is a scant quarter cup packed. Both figures are per four medium potatoes, so scale on that ratio.
- "Hot oven" for browningRead that as 425-450F for the second pass, ten to fifteen minutes, or run them under the broiler for three or four minutes if the filling is still warm.
- The cheese is unspecifiedIn nineteenth-century American cookery 'grated cheese' would most often have meant a hard factory cheese of the Cheddar type, though the book does not say. Any firm cheese that grates dry works; fresh mozzarella will loosen the filling.
- Boiling milk, not coldThe instruction is deliberate. Cold milk chills and stiffens the mash, so heat it and add it gradually until the mixture is soft but still holds a shape on the spoon.
- Sieve or masher, never a processorA ricer or fine sieve gives the light texture the recipe is after. A blender or food processor ruptures the starch cells and turns the filling to paste.
- The two endsThe small trimmed end is only there so the potato sits upright on the plate; cut it thin or you will lose the shell's floor.
- YieldOne potato per person as a side dish, two if it is the main part of a light supper.
Buckeye Cookery (first published in the 1870s as Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, with roots in Ohio and publication out of Minnesota) dates from the decades when the cast-iron range oven was displacing hearth cookery. The name "in jackets" simply means in their skins, a phrase common in nineteenth-century British and American cookery for potatoes cooked unpeeled. The closing line, that many prefer to leave out both cheese and crumbs, is in keeping with the book's habit of offering a plainer alternative alongside the richer one.