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Potatoes, Baked
Choose large potatoes of uniform size. Wash them well in lukewarm water, and scrub the skins with a soft brush. Put them in the oven, or in a Dutch oven, and bake until done enough. Do not let them remain in the oven after they are cooked, or they will become hard and shrivelled. Serve, neatly folded, on a hot napkin, and send pats of butter to table with them. Some cooks cut a little slice from the top of the potato after it is baked, mix with the pulp a pinch of minced shallot, a little pepper and salt, and a quarter of an ounce of butter, then put on the lid, and serve hot. Time to bake, two hours if of a good size. Probable cost of potatoes, 1d. or 1 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient, allow two for each person.
POTATOES, BEEF STEAK AND FRIED. (See BEEF STEAK AND FRIED POTATOES.)
A straightforward method that needs only two corrections: a stated oven temperature and a much shorter time.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none; ranges of the period were generally judged by experience rather than by a gauge. Bake at 400-425F; at much lower temperatures the skin does not crisp and the flesh stays heavy rather than floury.
- Two hours is too longAt 400-425F a large russet is done in 50-60 minutes, tested with a skewer that meets no resistance at the centre. The two-hour figure assumes a cooler, unevenly heated oven; held that long in a modern one the potato is exactly what the recipe warns against, hard and shrivelled.
- "Dutch oven"In Victorian British usage this usually meant an open-fronted metal reflector set facing the fire rather than the modern lidded cast-iron pot; the recipe does not define the term. A covered pot traps steam and gives a soft, damp skin; use the open oven rack instead.
- Prick the skinsNot mentioned here, but pierce each potato two or three times before baking, so that steam does not build under the skin and split it.
- The variety mattersChoose a high-starch potato — russet or a floury maincrop — for the dry, fluffy pulp the method assumes. Waxy salad potatoes will bake but stay dense and are poor candidates for the stuffed version.
- The stuffed variationA quarter of an ounce of butter is about 1 1/2 teaspoons per potato. Raw minced shallot is sharp; softening it in the butter first gives a rounder flavour, and the filled potatoes can go back into the oven for five minutes to heat through.
- The hot napkinA folded linen cloth on the serving dish absorbs steam so the skins do not sweat and soften on the way to the table. A clean tea towel does the same job.
- YieldTwo potatoes per person, as given, is a Victorian portion alongside a large meat course. One good-sized potato per person is closer to modern appetites.
Baked potatoes belong to the cheapest end of the Victorian table — Cassell's notes the cost at a penny to three-halfpence a pound — and hot baked potatoes were a familiar street food in London and other cities through the second half of the nineteenth century, sold from portable heated cans, wrapped in paper and eaten as much for the warmth as the food. The instruction to serve on a folded napkin shows the same recipe being dressed up for a dining room where potatoes arrived under cover with the joint.