Home › The Principles of Cookery › POTATOES, BOILED (another way) (Take twenty middle-sized)
POTATOES, BOILED (another way) (Take twenty middle-sized)
Take twenty middle-sized potatoes, peel, wash, and drain them, put them into a two-quart stewpan with one quart of water and a little salt. When they have boiled fifteen minutes, throw off the water, cover closely, and let them steam till done, which will be in about five minutes more.
A straightforward boil-then-steam method that still produces the driest, fluffiest boiled potato. A few of the quantities need translating for a modern pan.
- What "middle-sized" meansSmaller than a modern medium potato. The pan itself sets the limit: a two-quart stewpan already holding a quart of water leaves little more than a quart of space for all twenty, so these must be small. Twenty of that size is a side dish for six or so.
- The pan is too smallTwenty potatoes and a quart of water will not fit a two-quart stewpan today unless the potatoes are genuinely small. Use a pan that holds the potatoes in no more than two layers, and add water to come about halfway up.
- The hinge is the steamDraining while the centres are still firm and finishing under a tight lid on residual heat is the whole point of the method. The potatoes dry out rather than waterlog, and the surfaces go floury. Do not lift the lid to check.
- Timing depends on your varietyFifteen minutes plus five suits small waxy potatoes. Large floury ones cut to size will want twenty minutes of boiling and ten of steaming. Test with a skewer at the point where you would drain.
- Salt the water properly"A little salt" undersalts by modern taste. Around a teaspoon per quart seasons the potato itself, which no amount of salt at table will replicate.
- Start them in cold waterThe original does not say, but potatoes dropped into boiling water cook unevenly, the outside collapsing before the middle softens. Bring them up from cold and count the fifteen minutes from the boil.
- Dry heat at the endIf the pan is still hot, return it to the lowest flame for the steaming stage with a folded cloth under the lid to catch condensation. This is the same trick that produces a good mash.
Boiled potatoes appear over and over in nineteenth-century English cookery books, each entry a slightly different attempt to solve the same complaint: that a boiled potato turns sodden and grey. This one gives several methods in sequence, which is itself a sign of how contested the question was. The boil-and-steam approach here reflects the period preference for a floury, mealy potato that would break under a fork, the qualities associated with the varieties then most widely grown in Britain and Ireland. Peeling before boiling, as directed here, was one of the options available; boiling in the skin and peeling at table is often said to lose less starch.