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Potatoes in Seven Ways
Sunday, peel, steam, mash, add milk, butter and salt, and then beat like cake-batter, the longer the better, till they are nice and light. This steaming and beating will be found a great improvement. Monday, baked potatoes in their jackets; if any are left they may be warmed over, peeling when cold, and then slicing. Tuesday, peel and bake with roast of beef.
Wednesday, prepare in Kentucky style.
Thursday, peel, steam, and serve whole.
Friday, "potatoes a la pancake;" peel, cut in thin slices lengthwise, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and fry in butter or beef drippings, turning like griddle-cakes. Saturday, potatoes boiled in their jackets.
This is a week's rotation rather than a single dish, and most of it translates directly. The parts that need attention are the mashing, the two vague cross-references, and the variety of potato.
- The hinge: beat by hand, not by machineSteaming rather than boiling keeps the flesh dry, which is why the endless beating works here — with a wooden spoon or a masher you are aerating, not developing starch. The same treatment in a stand mixer or food processor turns mashed potato to glue within a minute.
- "Kentucky style"The page explains nothing; the phrase most likely refers the reader to a separate potato recipe in the book. Read Wednesday as a pointer elsewhere rather than as a method in itself.
- Choose the potato to the methodSunday's mash and Monday's jackets want a mealy potato (russet, King Edward). Thursday's whole steamed potatoes and Saturday's boiled-in-jacket hold together far better as a waxy variety. The original makes no such distinction.
- Baked in their jackets425F for 45 to 60 minutes for a medium potato, pricked, on a rack rather than in foil. Foil steams the skin and defeats the point of the day.
- Baked with the roastPeeled potatoes turned in the dripping around a beef roast need roughly 60 to 75 minutes at 350F, or about 45 at 425F. Parboil for 5 minutes first if the roast will be out of the oven sooner than that.
- "Potatoes a la pancake"Slice about an eighth of an inch thick, pat the slices dry, and fry in a single layer over medium-high heat, 4 to 5 minutes a side. Crowding the pan steams them and they will never brown. The recipe allows either butter or beef drippings; clarified butter or a neutral oil will not burn as readily as whole butter.
- Warming over the leftoversMonday's cold peeled slices fry well in a little fat, but do not leave baked potatoes at room temperature overnight to cool — refrigerate them and use within a couple of days.
- YieldReckon on one large or two medium potatoes per person for any of the seven days, and about a quarter cup of milk plus a tablespoon of butter per pound for the Sunday mash.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox from contributions by Midwestern housewives, is organised around the problem this entry answers: how to put a starch on the table 21 times a week without the family noticing it is always the same vegetable. Potatoes were the cheapest reliable bulk food in an Ohio or Minnesota cellar, keeping from autumn harvest through spring, and cookbooks of the period gave their instructions on laying fires and boiling shirts alongside such household economies. Note that the week is built around the roast, placed here on Tuesday: the days that follow lean on its meat and its dripping pan, and Friday's fried slices use the fat saved from it, a fat-and-fuel economy as much as a menu.