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Potatoes, Mashed, with Onions
Boil and dry the potatoes, and mash them according to the directions given above, and whilst mashing mix with them two or three onions which have been boiled till soft, and finely minced. The quantity of onion used will, of course, be regulated by taste. Some cooks, when the flavour is very much liked, chop up a raw onion, and mix it with the potatoes. Time, from half an hour to an hour to boil the potatoes. Probable cost, 1d. or 1 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient, two pounds of potatoes for four or five persons.
A cross-reference recipe: Cassell's assumes you have already read the entry on plain mashed potatoes, so the fat, milk and seasoning are all left implied. A few notes fill the gaps.
- The missing base recipe"Mash them according to the directions given above" refers back to Cassell's entry on plain mashed potatoes, not reproduced here. Standard practice of the period was to boil the potatoes, drain them, dry them off in the pan, and mash with butter, milk, salt and pepper. Cold milk added to hot potato dulls the texture; warm it first.
- Drying is the hingeThe instruction to "boil and dry" is doing the real work. Wet potato will not absorb butter or milk and turns to paste. Give the drained potatoes two or three minutes in the dry hot pan, shaking, until the surfaces go chalky.
- Boiling the onionsThe recipe leaves the amount to taste; two or three medium onions to 2 lb of potato is a fair reading. Simmer them whole and peeled for 25-35 minutes until a knife goes through without resistance, then drain thoroughly and chop fine. Undrained onion waters down the mash.
- Potato timingThe half-hour to an hour allows for potatoes of uncertain size, probably cooked whole. Quartered and peeled, most modern potatoes are done in 15-20 minutes; test with a skewer rather than watching the clock.
- The raw onion variantRaw onion in hot mash keeps its bite and turns sharper as the dish sits. If that is the intention, use a mild or spring onion and serve at once. Cooks who want onion flavour without the edge can sweat the chopped onion in butter instead of boiling it.
- Cost and yieldA penny to three-halfpence a pound makes this a notably cheap dish. The stated yield, 2 lb of potatoes for four or five people, is a side-dish portion by modern reckoning and holds up well.
- Choice of potatoA floury potato is what this needs. Use Maris Piper, King Edward or russet; waxy salad potatoes will go gluey however carefully you work them.
Potato mashed with onion is one of those dishes that belongs to no single cookbook because it belongs to every kitchen that had potatoes and onions to hand. It shades into the Irish champ (mash beaten with scallions and milk) and colcannon (mash with kale or cabbage, often with onion as well), both generally traced to the period when the potato had become the staple food of the Irish poor. Cassell's, compiled for a large late-Victorian household readership, treats it not as a regional dish but as a variation filed under the alphabetical run of potato entries, alongside dozens of others. The inclusion of a per-pound cost is characteristic of the book: a dish at three-halfpence a pound needed no further justification.