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POTATO PUDDING (another way) (Mash three pounds of boiled)
Mash three pounds of boiled potatoes, dry and floury. Mix with them four ounces of finely-shredded beef suet, four ounces of grated cheese, the flesh of a herring torn into flakes with two forks, and a quarter of a pint of milk. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, and bake in a well-heated oven for half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A thrifty supper dish of the sort Cassell's prints by the dozen: potato bulked out with suet, cheese and a single fish. It works, but two details in the original need pinning down before you start.
- The herring must already be cookedThe herring is presumably already cooked -- 'torn into flakes with two forks' implies cooked flesh: boiled, baked, or a smoked or salted fish. Thirty minutes in the oven buried in three pounds of dense potato may not bring a raw fish to a safe temperature, so poach or grill it first, then flake it off the bone.
- "Well-heated oven"No temperature is given in the original; in modern terms a hot oven, somewhere around 400F, is a reasonable reading. The potato is already cooked, so the half-hour is about heating through and browning the top rather than cooking the mixture.
- A quarter of a pintThis is an imperial quarter-pint, 5 fl oz or about 140 ml — a little more than half a US cup. Add it gradually; the wetness of your mash decides how much you actually want.
- Beef suetShredded suet is sold boxed in Britain and is harder to find elsewhere; grated frozen beef fat works, and butter can be substituted at the same weight. Suet gives a drier, more crumbly pudding than butter does.
- The cheeseThe original says only "grated cheese"; a hard, dry cheese of the Cheddar or Cheshire sort suits the period and the dish. Four ounces to three pounds of potato is a seasoning rather than a cheese sauce, so use something with real bite.
- Season itNo salt or pepper is listed. Salted or smoked herring brings plenty of salt; a fresh fish will need a good deal, plus black pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or mace if you want it period-correct.
- Dry and flouryThe one instruction that decides the dish. Use a floury variety (Maris Piper, russet), and let the drained potatoes steam dry in the hot pan before mashing — waxy or wet potato turns the pudding to paste.
- YieldFive or six as stated, in a buttered dish of about 2 quarts. Serve as a supper dish with something sharp: pickled beetroot, mustard, or a green salad.
Potato and salt herring is one of the oldest cheap protein pairings in northern Europe, and by the time Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was compiled in the 1870s the British herring fishery was substantial, sending barrels of cured fish inland by rail to households that could not have afforded fresh sea fish at all. The costing tells the story: a shilling for a dish feeding six. Note also that this is a pudding in the older, wider English sense — with suet, savoury as readily as sweet — rather than a dessert, and that the label "another way" simply marks an alternative to a preceding entry of the same name.