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Texas Baked Irish Potatoes
Boil some good Irish potatoes; when done, mash, season with salt, pepper and butter; mince a large onion fine, mix well through the potatoes, put in oven and brown nicely. -Mrs. C. E. S., Galveston, Texas.
A plain mashed-potato casserole from the days before anyone called it that. The whole dish turns on the onion, which is added raw and has only the browning time to cook.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the recipe assumes a range oven judged by hand. Browning a mash of this kind works at 400F for 25-35 minutes, or under a broiler for the last few minutes if the top is slow to colour.
- The raw onionA large onion minced fine and stirred through hot potato will soften but stay assertive. If you want it mellow, sweat it in the butter first; the original adds it raw, so the result will be noticeably sharper.
- "Irish potatoes"Nineteenth-century American usage distinguishing the ordinary white potato from the sweet potato, which was often simply called a potato in the South. Any floury variety works -- russets mash driest.
- QuantitiesNone are given, as was normal for a contributed recipe. Roughly 2 lb of potatoes, 4 tablespoons butter and one large onion fills a 9-inch dish and serves four to six.
- Getting a brown topA wet mash steams rather than browns. Drain the potatoes well and let them dry in the hot pan for a minute before mashing, then rough the surface with a fork so the ridges catch colour.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper are the only seasonings named. Salt the potato water as well as the mash -- potatoes seasoned only at the end taste flat no matter how much goes in.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox and published in Minneapolis in 1877, grew out of an Ohio predecessor, and the attribution style -- here to a Mrs. C. E. S. of Galveston -- suggests recipes gathered from contributors, though initials name no one in particular. The "Texas" in the title is doing the same work as the signature: it marks the recipe as a regional contribution rather than describing anything peculiarly Texan about mashed potatoes with onion. The phrase "Irish potato" was standard usage in the South well into the twentieth century, needed because "potato" on its own was as likely to mean the sweet potato.