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Potato Cones, or Loaves
Prepare some potatoes according to the directions given for potato balls. Form them into balls or cones, brush them over with beaten egg, and place them in the pan under a roasting joint, which is sufficiently cooked to drop the gravy with the fat. Turn them about that they may be equally browned. And allow a little of the gravy to drop upon them. Send them to table with the meat, but on a separate dish. Time to brown the cones, about twenty minutes.
A dripping-pan side dish from the era of the open roast: shaped mashed potato browned in the fat and juices falling from a joint above. It works in a modern oven with a rack, but the potato mixture has to be stiff enough to hold its shape.
- The cross-reference"Potato balls" is not reproduced here, but such mixtures are typically boiled potatoes mashed dry, seasoned, and bound with butter and egg yolk until stiff enough to roll. Any firm duchesse-style mixture will do; as a working starting point, about 2 lb floury potatoes, 2 oz butter, two yolks, salt and pepper.
- The hinge: keep the mixture drySteam the drained potatoes over low heat for a minute or two before mashing, and add no milk. Wet mash slumps in the pan and will not take the egg wash cleanly.
- Setting up without a spitStand the joint on a rack in a roasting tin and arrange the cones on the tin floor beneath it, spaced apart. If the tin is crowded with the meat, brown them in a separate shallow tin with a few spoonfuls of the drippings poured over.
- Timing and temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; "about twenty minutes" suggests a brisk roasting heat, and a modern oven around 400-425F is a reasonable equivalent. Add them only for the last stretch of the roast, as the recipe says "sufficiently cooked to drop the gravy with the fat" — early on the fat runs pale and the potatoes soak rather than crisp.
- "Gravy" here is not sauceIn this book gravy means the meat's own juices in the pan, not a thickened sauce. Spooning too much over the cones softens the crust; a little at the end is enough.
- Turning themUse two spoons or a thin palette knife rather than tongs, which crush the cones. Turn once at about the halfway point.
- Yield and servingThe recipe specifies no quantity; the suggested amount of potato above would make roughly 12 cones. The instruction to send them separately from the meat reflects Victorian service; a hot dish alongside the joint is the modern equivalent.
Shaped and browned mashed potato belongs to the nineteenth-century vogue for pommes duchesse and its relatives, in which purée stiffened with egg was piped or moulded into borders, nests and little cones and then coloured in a hot oven. What dates this version is the equipment: the potatoes are cooked in the pan set under a roasting joint, catching the fat and juices as they fall. That pan was one of the busiest vessels in a British kitchen — the same position produced Yorkshire pudding, batter puddings and roast potatoes — and its use here suggests a household economising on both fuel and fat. The recipe is built by cross-reference from a base preparation rather than written out in full.