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Potato Puffs
Put three table-spoonfuls of new milk into a clean saucepan with a couple of ounces of fresh butter, the thin, finely-minced rind of a small lemon, and two table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar. Let the milk heat very gently until the butter is dissolved. Add gradually three ounces of boiled potatoes, dry and floury, and beat the mixture until it is light and perfectly free from lumps. Stir in the well-beaten yolks of three eggs, and just before the puffs are to be baked the whites whisked to a firm froth. Butter some small patty-pans. Put the mixture into them, and bake in a well-heated oven. Sift powdered sugar thickly over them, and serve very hot. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for half a dozen puffs.
A small, soufflé-like sweet built on riced potato rather than flour, and it behaves like a soufflé: it must go from oven to table without pause.
- The hinge: fold the whites, then bake at onceThe recipe is explicit that the whipped whites go in "just before the puffs are to be baked." Fold them in with a spatula in two additions and get the tins into the oven within a minute or two; beaten out or left standing, the mixture loses its lift and bakes flat and dense.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe asks only for a "well-heated oven," with no figure given. A hot-but-not-fierce oven, in the region of 400F (200C), is a reasonable modern reading. Preheat fully, and resist opening the door for the first 15 minutes.
- Baking timeTwenty minutes suits deep patty-pans. In shallow modern tartlet or mini-muffin tins the puffs will be set and browned in 12-15 minutes, so watch them from twelve.
- Patty-pansSmall individual tins, roughly the size of a modern muffin or deep tartlet cup. Butter them generously and, if you like, dust with sugar so the puffs release cleanly.
- The potatoThree ounces is about 85 g of cooked potato, roughly one small floury variety such as Maris Piper, King Edward or russet. Boil, drain, dry it off over low heat, then pass it through a ricer or sieve while hot; mashing with a fork leaves lumps that will not beat out.
- Sifted sugarCaster sugar is the closest modern equivalent for the mixture; the "powdered sugar" sifted over at the end is likely what we would call icing (confectioners') sugar, though the period terms were not used consistently. Two tablespoons in the batter is modest by modern standards, so expect a gently sweet puff that leans on the topping.
- Lemon rind"Thin, finely-minced rind" means zest only, no white pith, taken off with a fine grater or peeled and chopped very small. Heating it in the milk and butter draws out the oils.
- Yield and servingSix puffs, one modest serving each. They sink within a few minutes of leaving the oven, which is why the original insists on "very hot" — dust and carry them straight to the table.
Potato in a sweet dish was unremarkable in Victorian Britain: riced potato was valued as a cheap, mild binder that gave lightness without the heaviness of flour, and it turns up in puddings, cheesecakes and "puffs" through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The costing here — 8d for six — is part of Cassell's editorial method, which priced almost every dish so a household could weigh one supper against another, and it tells you this was intended as a thrifty way to finish a meal, most likely using potatoes already boiled for dinner. The technique is essentially that of a small hot soufflé, a form English cookery books had absorbed from French practice by the mid-century.