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Potatoes, Mashed
Boil or steam the potatoes until they are sufficiently cooked, and are mealy and dry. Carefully remove any discoloured places there may be upon them, put the tubers into a bowl, and beat them with a wooden spoon for two or three minutes, and whilst beating, add a little salt, a slice of butter oiled, and one or two table-spoonfuls of boiling milk or cream. When the beaten potatoes are quite smooth and free from lumps, put them into a saucepan, and beat them over the fire for a minute or two, till they are light and quite hot. Dish them lightly, and draw the fork backwards over them to roughen the surface. Or butter a mould, press the potatoes into it, brown them in the oven, and turn them out before serving. Or put them into a dish, and reserve a small portion of the mash. Press this through a colander upon the top of the potatoes, and brown the surface before the fire, or with a red-hot iron. Or press them into small buttered pans, brown them, and turn them out before serving; serve very hot. Time, half an hour or more to boil the potatoes. Probable cost, 1d. to 1 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient two pounds of potatoes for four or five persons.
A late-Victorian template for mashed potato that covers the plain version and three ways of browning it. The technique is sound; only the vocabulary and the equipment need translating.
- Start with a mealy potatoThe instruction to boil until "mealy and dry" assumes a floury variety — Russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy salad potatoes will not break down to the light texture the recipe is aiming at, however long they are beaten.
- "A slice of butter oiled"Oiled butter means melted butter, poured in warm rather than dropped in cold. The recipe gives no weight for the butter, and calls for only one or two tablespoonfuls of boiling milk or cream for two pounds of potatoes; add liquid a spoonful at a time and stop when the mash is smooth.
- The milk must be boilingCold liquid cools the potatoes and makes them harder to bring to a light texture; scalding milk beaten into hot potatoes keeps the mash warm and loose. The same reason underlies the second beating over the fire -- the potatoes go to table genuinely hot.
- Beat, but by handTwo or three minutes with a wooden spoon is right. A food processor or stick blender ruptures the starch cells and turns the mash to paste within seconds; a ricer, food mill or masher followed by the spoon gives the intended result.
- "Brown before the fire"An open range fire or a salamander — a metal plate heated red and held over the surface. A modern grill or broiler on high, with the dish 4–5 inches from the element, does the same job in a few minutes.
- The moulded versionFor potatoes pressed into a buttered mould or small pans, the recipe asks only that they be browned in the oven. A hot oven works; go by the surface, taking them out when it is crisp and coloured, then turn out.
- Cost and yieldThe pricing in pence per pound is of no use except as a period detail. The yield still holds: 2 lb of potatoes serves four to five as a side dish.
The three finishes listed at the end belong to a service culture that valued surface: potatoes turned out of a mould, forked into ridges, or sieved through a colander into rough peaks and glazed with a salamander, the heated iron plate used in nineteenth-century ranges. The insistence on beating rather than pounding, and on boiling milk, reflects a working understanding of potato starch that predates any chemical explanation of it: cooks knew from repeated failure that cold liquid and heavy handling produced glue.