Home › The Principles of Cookery › POTATOES, BOILED (another way) (Choose potatoes of uniform)
POTATOES, BOILED (another way) (Choose potatoes of uniform)
Choose potatoes of uniform size, wash them well, and scrub them with a soft brush, but do not touch them at all with a knife, even to remove the specks. Put them in a saucepan, barely cover them with cold water, throw in a spoonful of salt, and let them simmer gently until they are done enough, then let them boil quickly for two or three minutes. Drain the water from them, leave them in the saucepan by the side of the fire partially covered, and let them remain until they are quite dry, then peel them quickly, and serve at once. Leave the cover of the tureen a little on one side, that the steam may escape and not descend upon the potatoes. Time, half an hour to an hour, according to the quality of the tubers. Probable cost, 1d. or 1 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient, half a dozen for two or three persons.
A method for boiling potatoes in their skins, from a period when a floury, dry potato was the mark of a good cook. The technique still works, and the reasoning behind each step is sound.
- The hinge: keep the skins wholeNothing is pared or cut, not even to dig out an eye, so the flesh does not waterlog. Barely covering them with cold water follows the same logic — less water, less leaching.
- "Done enough" in practiceTest with a thin skewer at the thickest point; it should meet no resistance in the centre. In practice smaller potatoes are often ready nearer the lower end of the book's half-hour-to-an-hour range, which it says varies with "the quality of the tubers."
- The two-minute hard boilThe final quick boil -- The book gives no reason for the two or three minutes of fast boiling at the end; it may simply be to finish the centres. Do not extend it or the outsides break up.
- Drying by the fireA range's fireside is a low, dry heat. Return the drained pan to the lowest burner for 2-3 minutes with the lid ajar, as the recipe says ("partially covered"), and shake once; a very low oven does the same job. The steam escaping is what makes them floury.
- Peeling hotSkins slip off best while the potatoes are still too hot to hold comfortably — hold each in a folded cloth and pull the skin away with a small knife. Left to cool, the skin grips.
- The tureenA covered serving dish. Tilting the lid stops condensation dripping back onto the potatoes, which undoes the drying. A warmed bowl with a cloth laid loosely over it does the same job.
- Variety mattersThe book's "quality of the tubers" is really variety and age. Floury types — russet, King Edward, Maris Piper — reward this method; waxy salad potatoes will never go mealy no matter how long they steam.
- YieldSix medium potatoes for two or three people, as stated, assumes they are a side dish among several. The costing of a penny a pound is of historical interest only.
Cassell's gives boiled potatoes several entries, which tells you how much weight a Victorian kitchen placed on getting them right: badly boiled potatoes were a standing complaint in nineteenth-century cookery writing, and dryness rather than mere tenderness was the test. Boiling in the skin, then peeling at the table or just before serving, was the older English practice; the insistence on not touching the potato with a knife beforehand reflects a widely repeated belief that cut surfaces let the potato absorb water and lose flavour, which is broadly borne out by the way exposed starch takes up liquid. The instruction to prop the tureen lid is characteristic of a period when vegetables travelled some distance from a basement kitchen to the dining room and arriving hot mattered as much as arriving dry.