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Potatoes, Mashed and Browned
Boil a pound of mealy potatoes in their skins. When done enough, peel them, throw them into a bowl, and beat them lightly with an ounce of butter, two table-spoonfuls of cream or milk, a little pepper and salt, and the yolk of an egg. Butter a pie-dish, turn the mashed potatoes into it, brush over with the white of an egg, ornament on the top, and brown in a quick oven. Serve the potatoes in the dish. Time, half an hour or more to boil the potatoes, ten minutes to brown them. Probable cost, 5d. Sufficient for two persons.
A simple duchesse-style mash, baked in the dish it is served from. The recipe is complete as written; only the oven wording and a few quantities need translating.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F (200-230C). Ten minutes at that heat is enough to set the egg glaze and colour the ridges; the potato inside is already cooked.
- Mealy potatoesFloury varieties — Russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy potatoes will not beat up light and turn gluey under the fork.
- Boiled in the skinsThis is the hinge. Skin-on boiling keeps water out of the flesh, so the mash takes butter and cream instead of turning slack. Peel them hot, holding them in a cloth.
- ProportionsA pound of potatoes to 1 oz butter (2 tablespoons), 2 tablespoons cream, one yolk. That is a firm, pipeable mash rather than a loose one — deliberate, since it must hold the ornamentation.
- Beat them lightlyLightly is meant literally. Overworking floury potato develops starch and produces paste; a ricer or masher and a brief beating are correct, a food processor is not.
- Ornament on the topFork ridges across the surface, or pipe the mash through a star tube into rosettes. The raised edges catch the heat and brown more readily than a flat surface.
- Egg white washBrushed white gives gloss and a firm skin without the deep colour of a whole-egg glaze. Use the white left from the yolk beaten into the potato — nothing is wasted, which is the point.
- Yield"Sufficient for two persons" as a substantial side. Alongside a roast with other vegetables it will stretch to four.
- Probable cost5d is fivepence in pre-decimal currency, given because Cassell's costed nearly every dish for household accounting.
The method — mash enriched with butter, cream and egg yolk, shaped, glazed and browned — is essentially pommes duchesse, naturalised into British domestic cooking during the nineteenth century. The detail that gives away the period is the pie-dish: browning a mash in the vessel it goes to table in was economical of both fuel and washing-up. The costing in pence, and the note that a pound of potatoes serves two, reflect the book's purpose as a reference for a cook working to a weekly budget rather than a source of inspiration.