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Colcannon
Boil separately equal weights of young cabbage, savoy, or spinach, and potatoes. Chop the greens and mash the potatoes, and mix them well together with a little pepper and salt, and one ounce of butter to one pound of the mixed vegetables. Heat the mixture over the fire for a few minutes, stirring it all the time; then press it into a hot, well-buttered mould. Turn out and serve. Or, press it after mixing into a well-buttered mould, and put it into the oven for half an hour. Turn out and serve. Cold vegetables may be warmed up in this way. Probable cost, 6d. for a pint mould. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A plain nineteenth-century vegetable dish that stands or falls on how dry the greens are. Everything else is seasoning and shaping.
- Squeeze the greens hardBoiled cabbage and especially spinach hold a great deal of water, and wet greens turn mashed potato to slop that will not hold a mould. Drain, cool slightly, then wring the chopped greens in a clean cloth before mixing.
- Equal weights is by raw weightEqual weights is probably by raw weight -- "Boil separately equal weights" reads as weighing potato and greens before cooking, though the recipe does not say so outright. A pound of raw spinach cooks down to a few ounces, so that version comes out far greener than the cabbage one; if you want the potato to dominate, use cabbage or savoy.
- SavoyA crinkle-leaved winter cabbage, still sold under that name. Curly kale is also traditional in Irish colcannon and works here without any other change.
- ButterOne ounce to the pound is roughly 28 g per 450 g, which is lean by modern standards. Modern versions commonly use more, often with a splash of hot milk or cream.
- The mouldAny straight-sided basin, charlotte mould or small cake tin will do. Butter it heavily and press the mixture in firmly with the back of a spoon so there are no air pockets, or it will collapse on turning out.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "the oven". Half an hour at around 350F/180C suits it: it sets the surface and gives a faint crust, and will not brown much unless you dot the top with extra butter.
- Cold vegetablesThe recipe explicitly allows yesterday's greens and potatoes to be warmed up this way. Heat it through properly to steaming hot right to the centre rather than merely warming it.
- YieldThree or four as a side, at roughly a pint of mixture. Season more boldly than the recipe suggests ; a fair amount of pepper and a scrape of nutmeg suit it.
Colcannon is Irish in origin, the name generally traced to the Gaelic cál ceannann, "white-headed cabbage," and it is traditionally associated with Hallowe'en, when charms and rings were hidden in the dish for fortune-telling. Cassell's, writing for English middle-class households, strips out all of that and presents it as a thrifty way of using up boiled greens and potatoes — note the closing line about warming up cold vegetables and the costing at sixpence a pint mould. The moulding and turning out reflect late-Victorian table habits, where even a dish of mashed potato and cabbage was expected to arrive with a shape.