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Potato Cheesecakes
Rub two ounces of lump sugar upon the rind of half a small lemon until the yellow part is taken off, then crush them to powder. Mix with this three ounces of boiled potatoes, dry and floury, two ounces of clarified butter, and the yolks of two well-beaten eggs. Beat the mixture thoroughly, and add at the last moment the white of an egg beaten to a firm froth. Line the patty-pans with puff-paste, half fill them with the mixture, and bake in a well-heated oven. Or, take a quarter of a pound of boiled potatoes, dry and floury. Bruise them well, and let them cool a little, then mix with them two ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs and three ounces of loaf sugar which has been rubbed upon half a small lemon and crushed to powder. Add three ounces of fresh butter which has been beaten to a cream, and three eggs. The eggs should be added separately, and the mixture should be well beaten between each addition. Three-parts fill the lined patty-pans, and bake in a moderate oven for about twenty minutes.
POTATO CHEESECAKES (another way). (See CHEESECAKES, POTATO.)
Two versions of the same idea: a lemon-scented potato custard baked in pastry cases. The hinge is the potato, which must be dry, floury and passed through a sieve or ricer while still hot, or the filling turns gluey and heavy.
- Sugar rubbed on the rindDragging a lump of sugar over a lemon draws out the zest oil, and the crushed sugar carries it into the mixture. With modern granulated or caster sugar, grate the zest of half a lemon and rub it into the sugar with your fingers for a minute; the effect is the same. Loaf and lump sugar are refined white sugar, cast in solid loaves and broken or cut into lumps.
- Patty-pansShallow tartlet tins, roughly 2 to 2½ inches across. A 12-hole bun or shallow muffin tin stands in well; a deep muffin tin will not, since the filling wants to set quickly in a thin layer.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperatures. A "well-heated oven" for the puff-paste version is usually read as somewhere around 400-425F, hot enough for the pastry to rise before the filling sets, and a "moderate oven" as roughly 350F. The twenty minutes stated for the second version suits tins of that size.
- PotatoesThree ounces is about 85 g, a quarter pound about 115 g — one medium floury potato, baked or boiled and drained very well. Mealy varieties such as russet or Maris Piper; waxy potatoes will not go floury however long they cook.
- Clarified butterButter with the water and milk solids removed, which keeps the first mixture from weeping. Melt butter gently, skim the foam, and pour off the clear fat, leaving the milky sediment behind. Ghee works directly.
- The egg whiteIn the first version the whisked white is the only lift, so fold it in with a light hand and get the tins into the oven at once. The second version relies on beating three whole eggs in one at a time into creamed butter, which holds more air but sets denser.
- YieldEach quantity fills roughly a dozen small tartlets, though the second mixture is the larger of the two and may give more. They are likely best eaten the day they are made.
- Why no cheeseNeither version contains any. "Cheesecake" in Victorian usage covers any rich curd-like tartlet filling, and these are read as substitutes for a lemon curd or almond cheesecake.
Potato cheesecakes belong to a long English line of small "cheesecakes" that contain no cheese at all: sweetened, spiced, egg-thickened fillings baked in pastry; the related Yorkshire curd tart survives, though it does still use curd. Recipes using mashed potato in place of curd or ground almonds appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward and were valued as much for economy as for texture — a potato and a few breadcrumbs stretched the butter and eggs that made the dish rich. The entry prints two versions and then carries a cross-reference to the same dish under another heading, which is characteristic of the dictionary format: it gathers variants already circulating in print rather than fixing one authoritative method. The sugar-rubbed-on-lemon-rind trick belongs to an age of hard sugar loaves broken up at home.