Home › The Principles of Cookery › Potatoes, Mock New, in Cream
Potatoes, Mock New, in Cream
Wash and peel a number of small old potatoes, and cut them down to the size of new ones. Boil them in salt and water for eight or ten minutes, then pour off the liquid, cover with a cloth, and let them steam by the side of the fire for ten minutes. Almost cover them with cream, sprinkle a little salt over them, and let them simmer very gently until they are done quite enough, but whole. Lift them out carefully with a spoon, pour the cream over them, and serve very hot. If preferred, white sauce may be used instead of cream. Time, half an hour. Probable cost of potatoes, 1d. or 1 1/2d. per pound. Allow half a dozen for each person.
A late-Victorian trick for making winter potatoes pass as spring ones: old potatoes pared down to marble size, part-boiled, steamed dry, then finished in cream. The technique still works, and the steaming step is what keeps them intact.
- The hinge: dry them before the creamThe ten minutes under a cloth off the heat drives off surface water, so the potatoes take up the cream rather than watering it down. Skip it and the sauce is likely to end up thin.
- Which potatoesUse a waxy or all-purpose variety — Charlotte, Yukon Gold, red-skinned. A floury baking potato will collapse during the simmer, and "whole" is the whole point of the dish.
- "Cut them down to the size of new ones"Roughly 1 to 1.5 inches across. Turning them into even rounds with a paring knife is traditional; a melon baller gives the same effect faster with more waste.
- "By the side of the fire"On a range this means residual warmth, not direct heat. Cover the drained pan with a folded cloth and the lid and leave it on the lowest burner setting, or off the heat entirely on a warm hob.
- The cream simmerKeep it barely trembling. Cream at a full boil will split and the potatoes will knock about and break up. Double or heavy cream holds best; single cream and half-and-half are more likely to separate.
- Total timeThe stated half hour is realistic: 8-10 minutes boiling, 10 steaming, then 8-12 minutes in the cream depending on size. Test with a skewer rather than by the clock.
- YieldSix small potatoes per person, as the original says, is roughly 5 oz of prepared potato — a side dish for four from about 1.25 lb of trimmed potatoes, rather more before trimming.
- The white sauce alternativeThe recipe allows white sauce 'if preferred', and it would have been the cheaper option. If you use it, keep it loose — sauce thick enough to coat a spoon will set into paste around the potatoes as they cool.
The dish belongs to a whole Victorian genre of "mock" cookery, in which a cheap or out-of-season ingredient is dressed to resemble a costly one: mock turtle, mock crab, mock goose. New potatoes had a short British season from late spring, commanded a premium at market, and were prized for their thin skins and firm, sweet flesh; by February what remained in store was maincrop. Paring them down to size and finishing them in cream restored the look and something of the texture. The price note — a penny to three halfpence a pound — is characteristic of Cassell's, which quoted costs throughout, and it marks potatoes as among the cheapest things on the table.