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POTATO PUREE (another way)
Take some potatoes well boiled and well drained, pound them in a mortar, moisten with good broth and salt then rub them through a sieve; when done, put the puree to warm in a stewpan, and add two ounces of fresh butter. The puree must be thinner than mash. Put fried bread round the puree. Sometimes dream may be used instead of broth; but it is not so wholesome, besides being much dearer.
A soft potato puree, looser than mash, thinned with stock rather than milk. The method is straightforward; the only real decisions are the potato and the texture.
- "Dream" is a typesetting errorThe last line should read cream may be used instead of broth. Cassell's judgement that it is less wholesome and dearer reflects Victorian dietary thinking and Victorian dairy prices, not modern taste.
- Choose a floury potatoMaris Piper, King Edward or russet break down cleanly. Waxy varieties resist the sieve and give a gluey result.
- Mortar, food mill, ricer — not a processorPounding and sieving is the point: it ruptures the cells gently. A blender or food processor shears the starch and turns the puree to glue within seconds. A ricer or mouli does the same job as the mortar and sieve in one pass.
- Dry the potatoes first"Well drained" is doing work here. Return the drained potatoes to the dry hot pan over low heat for a minute or two to drive off steam before pounding, or the puree will be watery before any broth goes in.
- Broth quantityNone is given because it depends on the potatoes. Reckon on roughly 150–250 ml of hot stock per 1 kg of cooked potato, added a little at a time. The target is a puree that just holds a slow ripple, thinner than mash but not pourable.
- Two ounces of butterAbout 55 g, and it goes in off the heat or over the gentlest flame so it emulsifies rather than splitting out. Two ounces suits roughly 1 kg of potato.
- Fried bread croûtesTriangles or fingers of white bread fried in butter or clarified butter until crisp, arranged around the edge of the dish at the last moment. They soften quickly against the hot puree, so fry them while the puree warms.
- YieldTreated as a garnish or accompaniment in the style of the book, 1 kg of potatoes serves six to eight.
The technique — boil, pound in a mortar, moisten, pass through a sieve — is the classical French purée transferred into English domestic cookery, and the tamis or hair sieve was familiar equipment in a well-appointed Victorian kitchen. The closing remark about cream being "not so wholesome, besides being much dearer" is characteristic of the period's household manuals, where digestibility and economy were argued together and richness was treated as a mild moral failing as much as an expense. Note too that the potato is being enriched with meat broth rather than dairy.