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Potato Snow
Choose fine white potatoes free from spots. Wash them well, put them in their jackets into a saucepan, and barely cover them with cold water. Let them boil gently until they begin to crack, then pour the water from them, let them drain, and then dry by the side of the fire until they fall to pieces. Take away the skins, and lay before the fire the hot dish on which the potatoes are to be served. Rub the potatoes through a hot wire sieve, so that they shall fall lightly upon the dish, and on no account disturb them after they have fallen. Serve very hot. Time, thirty to forty minutes to boil the potatoes. Probable cost, 1d. or 1 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient, three potatoes for one person.
A Victorian side dish that depends entirely on handling rather than ingredients: floury potatoes pushed through a sieve and left absolutely untouched. Everything hinges on not compressing what falls.
- The hinge: never touch it after sievingThe whole dish is the texture of loose, dry threads of potato piled up by gravity. Smoothing, spooning or reheating it in a mound collapses the air out and you simply have mashed potato.
- Choose the right potato"Fine white potatoes" most likely points to a floury, high-starch variety — Russet, King Edward, Maris Piper. Waxy salad potatoes will not fall to pieces and will smear rather than pass through the sieve.
- Drying by the fireSubstitute the drained pan set over the lowest possible heat for a few minutes, lid off, shaking occasionally, or spread the potatoes on a tray in a 300F oven until the surfaces go chalky. The point is to drive off water so the flesh is dry enough to break into separate grains.
- The sieveA stiff wire drum sieve or a coarse conical strainer, warmed under hot running water and dried. A ricer gives long strands rather than snow; a food mill packs the potato as it turns. If you use a ricer, let the strands fall freely and do not press them together.
- Working hotWarming the serving dish is not decoration — sieved potato has enormous surface area and loses heat within a minute. Peel with a cloth in your hand and sieve straight over the hot dish.
- SeasoningThe original adds nothing at all, not even salt. Salting the cooking water and offering butter separately keeps the texture intact.
- Quantity and costThree potatoes per person; on modern potatoes reckon on roughly 6-8 oz per head. The prices quoted, a penny or three-halfpence a pound, are pre-decimal and of no use except as a reminder of how cheap potatoes were.
- TimingThirty to forty minutes is right for large whole potatoes started in cold water and simmered gently. Boiling hard splits the skins early and waterlogs the flesh, which is fatal here.
Potato snow appears in English cookery books from the early nineteenth century onward, and is sometimes said to go back further still. It belongs to the same impulse as sieved chestnut and riced potato garnishes: an effect achieved by technique and by owning the right tool, in this case the wire sieve that Cassell's assumes every kitchen has. The pricing per pound, along with the unseasoned finish, marks it as food for a household where potatoes were the cheapest thing on the table and the cook's skill was the only luxury involved.