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Potato Cakes
Rub two ounces of good beef dripping and two ounces of lard into one pound of flour, add a tea-spoonful of baking-powder, a pinch of salt, and a pound of potato flour which has been obtained by scooping out the inside from some hot baked potatoes. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and stir into them a well-beaten egg and as much lukewarm milk as will make a smooth, light paste. Roll this out to the thickness of an inch or an inch and a half, and cut it into squares or rounds. Lay these on a buttered tin, and bake in a moderate oven. When the cakes are lightly browned on one side, turn them upon the other. Cut them open, butter them as soon as they are taken out of the oven, and serve very hot. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A scone-type dough enriched with the scooped flesh of hot baked potatoes. The wording is the main obstacle: nothing in this recipe involves the commercial starch sold today as potato flour.
- "Potato flour" means baked potato fleshThe recipe defines its own term: a pound of soft interior scooped from hot baked potatoes, which is roughly 3 to 4 medium potatoes weighed after scooping. Substituting the powdered potato starch sold under that name would give an unworkable, gluey dough.
- Work the potato in while it is hotHot potato mashes smooth and blends into the fat without lumps; cooled potato turns waxy and leaves streaks through the crumb. Rub the fats into the flour first, then add the potato immediately after scooping.
- Moderate oven350F, or 325F in a convection oven. The cakes are thick and need to set through rather than colour fast.
- Beef dripping and lardTwo ounces of each, 4 oz of fat in total for a pound of flour. Butter works and gives a better flavour to modern palates, though it browns sooner; all-lard or all-shortening gives a shorter texture, though the recipe itself calls for half dripping and half lard.
- ThicknessAn inch to an inch and a half is genuinely that thick, closer to a British scone than a griddle cake. Cut with a floured cutter and do not press the sides, or the cakes will not rise straight.
- Turning them in the ovenThis step probably reflects baking on a solid tin in a range with strong bottom heat. In a modern oven the tops usually colour on their own; check at 12 minutes and turn only if the undersides are browning much faster.
- Timing and donenessAbout 20 minutes total. They are done when a skewer comes out clean and the sides feel dry rather than doughy, since the potato keeps the interior moist and can read as underbaked.
- YieldA pound of flour and a pound of potato makes about 8 to 10 cakes of this thickness. "Sufficient for three or four persons" suggests them as the substantial centre of a tea, split and buttered, rather than as a side.
- Serve at onceButter them the moment they leave the oven so the butter melts into the split face. The recipe wants them served very hot; reheat in the oven rather than eating them cold.
Potato in bread and cake doughs was a thrifty commonplace of nineteenth-century British and Irish kitchens: it stretched expensive flour, held moisture so baked goods stayed soft an extra day, and used up the previous meal's leftovers. The costing of eightpence is characteristic of the household manuals of the period, which are often said to have quoted prices so a mistress could check the cook's accounts; it also shows how cheap the dish was, since a pound of flour and a few potatoes were among the least expensive things a kitchen could put on a tea table. Beef dripping, saved from the roast, appears here rather than butter, which is a fair indication of the audience the book expected.