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POTATO BALLS (another way)
Mash one pound of dry mealy potatoes until they are quite smooth. Before they have time to cool, mix with them a table-spoonful of hot milk, one ounce and a half of clarified butter, a salt-spoonful of salt, a pinch of pepper, a little grated nutmeg, and the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. Beat the mixture till these ingredients are thoroughly blended, then add the whites of the eggs whisked to a firm froth. Mould the preparation into small balls the size of a large marble, and fry in hot fat until they are lightly browned. Drain, and serve the balls piled on a hot napkin. Time to fry, five or six minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A plain potato croquette, bound with egg and lightened with whisked whites. The whole thing turns on the potatoes being dry.
- The hinge: dry potatoesUse a floury variety (Russet, Maris Piper, King Edward) and dry the drained flesh over low heat for a minute or two before mashing. Waterlogged potato will slump in the fat and the balls will burst.
- Weights and small measuresOne pound of potatoes, roughly 450 g, or about two large baking potatoes; the recipe does not specify whether this is weighed before or after cooking and peeling. An ounce and a half of butter is about 3 tablespoons; a salt-spoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- Clarified butterGhee works directly, or melt butter and pour off the clear fat, leaving the white sediment behind.
- Fold, do not beat, the whitesThe instruction to "add" the whisked whites means fold them in with a spatula. Beating them in destroys the aeration that keeps these light rather than dense.
- Frying temperature and timeThe recipe gives no fat temperature; around 350-360F is the usual modern range for such fritters, at which balls this size will colour well before the stated five or six minutes. Go by colour, and fry a single test ball first to check the mixture holds.
- Insurance against burstingChilling the shaped balls for 20 minutes firms them considerably, and a light roll in flour or fine breadcrumbs gives a skin. The original calls for neither.
- ServingThe "hot napkin" is a folded linen cloth laid in the serving dish to absorb frying fat; a warmed plate lined with paper does the same work. Serve immediately, as they deflate as they cool.
- YieldThree or four as a side dish, as the original states.
This is a croquette in all but name, and the family it belongs to is French: potato purée enriched with butter and yolk, then bound and fried, is the basis of everything from pommes croquettes to the choux-lightened pommes dauphine. The title's "(another way)" tells us Cassell's ran at least one companion version of potato balls alongside this one, which is distinguished by the whisked whites, which do the aerating work that pastry does in the dauphine version. The costing of 8d. is characteristic of Cassell's, which priced nearly every dish so a household could weigh it against the week's budget, and the "hot napkin" service was standard Victorian practice for anything fried, keeping the grease off the dish and the reputation of the cook intact.