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Potato Cake
Take half a pound of dry floury potatoes which have been baked or boiled and then crushed and beaten with a rolling-pin until they are quite free from lumps. Mix with them three ounces of flour and a little pepper and salt, and add to them as much lukewarm milk and butter as will make a smooth, firm dough. Add either a little yeast or an egg, and half a tea-spoonful of baking-powder. Roll this paste out till it is about two inches thick, and then dredge a little flour over it. Cut it out to the exact size of the pan in which it is to be baked. Rub the saucepan over with butter or dripping before putting the cake into it, lay it in very carefully, cover with a plate, shake it every now and then to keep it from burning, and bake on the trivet of the stove over a gentle fire. When it is half done on one side, turn it carefully upon the other. Serve on a hot dish. Cold potatoes, if dry and floury, may be warmed up in this way. Time to bake the cake, about half and hour.
A stovetop potato bread cooked covered in a buttered pan — closer to an Irish fadge or a Scottish potato scone than to anything baked in an oven. The hinge is heat: gentle and steady, or the outside scorches before the centre sets.
- Weights in modern termsHalf a pound of cooked potato is about 225 g, roughly two medium baking potatoes; three ounces of flour is 85 g, or a scant ¾ cup. The milk and butter are left unmeasured — add a tablespoon at a time until the dough just holds together without sticking.
- Use a floury potato and keep it dry"Dry floury" means a high-starch potato — russet or Maris Piper, baked rather than boiled if you can, since baking drives off water. Waxy potatoes make a gluey paste that will not take up the flour.
- Yeast or egg, not both leavenings at onceYeast or egg -- The original offers a choice: a little yeast, or an egg, in either case alongside the half teaspoon of baking powder. With yeast you would need to let the dough rise, which the recipe never says; the egg version works as written and needs no waiting.
- "Two inches thick" is thicker than you wantAt that depth the centre will still be raw dough when the crust is dark. Roll to about ¾ inch for a cake that cooks through in the stated half hour, or accept a much longer, much gentler cooking.
- The pan and the "trivet"The trivet was a stand that held a pan off the direct heat for indirect, moderate cooking. On a modern hob, use a heavy cast-iron or thick-based skillet over low heat — roughly the setting you would use for pancakes, no hotter — buttered, with a lid or inverted plate on top.
- Shaking and turningThe shaking is to stop the dough adhering and catching in one spot; do it every few minutes. Turn once, at about 15 minutes, when the underside is set and evenly browned and the cake will move as a single piece. A wide spatula and a plate make the flip safer than a straight lift.
- DonenessA skewer into the middle should come out clean and dry, and the cake should sound hollow when tapped. Undercooked potato dough is heavy and slightly damp in the centre rather than raw-tasting, so test rather than judging by colour.
- Yield and servingOne small cake — the recipe says only that it is cut to the exact size of the pan it is baked in — cut into wedges. Best split and buttered straight from the pan, hot, as a breakfast or tea bread; it turns dense once cold, though it reheats well in a dry skillet.
Potato cakes of this kind belong to the great nineteenth-century economy of leftovers: the recipe ends by noting that cold potatoes "may be warmed up in this way," which is the real point of it. The method — cooked potato beaten smooth, bound with a modest amount of flour, and browned in a covered pan rather than in an oven — is the same one that produces Irish fadge and potato bread, Scottish tattie scones, and the Welsh and northern English griddle cakes. Cooking on a trivet over a gentle fire reflects a kitchen where oven space was scarce or shared, while the alternative of "either a little yeast or an egg" alongside baking powder catches the period: chemical raising agents were cheap and widely sold by the late Victorian decades, but older yeast-risen habits had not yet been displaced.