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Potato Rice
Boil two pounds of potatoes-regents are best for the purpose-mash them with two ounces of butter and four table-spoonfuls of boiling milk, and season with pepper and salt. Put them into a large colander, and press them through this on to a hot dish, and whilst doing so, shake the colander every minute or two, that the potatoes may fall lightly like rice. Serve very hot, with broiled steak or sausages. Time, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost of potatoes, 1d. or 1 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain dish of pressed mashed potato, and the whole point of it is texture: the strands must fall loose and separate rather than settle into a mound. Everything below serves that end.
- The hinge: work the potato as little as possibleMash only until the butter and milk are absorbed, then press once through the colander onto the serving dish. Beating or re-mixing after pressing releases starch and collapses the strands into ordinary mash.
- RegentsAn old floury English maincrop variety, long out of general cultivation. Any dry, mealy potato does the job — Russet, King Edward, Maris Piper. Waxy salad potatoes will not rice properly; they turn gluey.
- The colanderVictorian colanders were generally tinned metal with punched holes, usually coarser than a modern fine mesh, which will clog. Use a potato ricer or a coarse drum sieve if your colander's perforations are small, and hold it high above the dish so the strands separate as they fall.
- Boiling milk, not coldFour tablespoons is about 60 ml. Heating it matters: cold milk chills the potato and makes it sticky to press. Two ounces of butter is 55 g.
- Heat the serving dishRiced potato is all surface area and loses heat in a minute or two. Warm the dish in a low oven and take it to the table immediately; there is no way to reheat this without destroying the texture.
- TimingThe three-quarters of an hour covers peeling, boiling and pressing. The potatoes themselves need 20–25 minutes at a simmer, drained well and left a moment over low heat to steam dry before mashing.
- YieldFour to five as a side, as stated. Two pounds is about 900 g, which is generous alongside steak or sausages.
Riced or "snowed" potato was a standard Victorian garnish and side, and it is really a technique — the same press-through-a-sieve trick used for potato snow, for stuffing bases and for the piped borders of hot entrées. Regents were one of the dominant British maincrop varieties through the nineteenth century, valued precisely for the dry, floury flesh that falls apart under pressure. The costing of a penny to three halfpence a pound is a reminder of what this book was for: a household manual for cooks who had to justify the week's spending, pairing a cheap bulk vegetable with the broiled steak or sausages that carried the meal.