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Potatoes, Moulded, with Parmesan
Mash some potatoes till quite smooth, and bind them together with one or two well-beaten eggs. Put them into a dish, and shape them in a dome-like form high in the centre. Smooth the surface, and afterwards draw the back of a fork gently over it, and sprinkle upon it some finely-grated Parmesan. Put little pieces of butter here and there upon it, and bake the potatoes till they are brightly browned. Serve very hot. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient, two pounds of potatoes for four or five persons.
A duchesse-style potato dome, baked rather than piped. The recipe assumes you know your oven, so the only real decisions are the dryness of the mash and the heat you finish it at.
- Oven heatCassell's gives none. Bake at 400-425F: hot enough to brown the ridges and the butter within 20-30 minutes, not so hot that the surface sets before the interior heats through.
- Dry the potatoesThe hinge of the dish. Boil floury potatoes (Maris Piper, russet), drain, then return them to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two to drive off steam before mashing. Wet mash slumps and the fork-drawn ridges disappear in the oven.
- Eggs"One or two well-beaten eggs" for 2 lb of potato: within that range, two whole eggs give a lighter set, or use yolks in place of whole eggs for richness. Let the mash cool to warm before beating them in so they bind rather than scramble.
- ParmesanGrate it finely from a block. Pre-grated tubs usually carry an anti-caking agent and tend to brown patchily. Roughly 2 oz over a 2 lb mound works well; much more and the crust can turn leathery.
- The forkThe ridges do more than decorate: raised edges catch the butter and cheese and brown first, which is where the contrast in the dish comes from. Draw the fork lightly and do not flatten the pattern afterwards.
- DishUse a shallow gratin dish or ovenproof platter, not a deep casserole. The dome needs exposed surface; a high-sided dish shields it and it steams instead of browning.
- Probable cost, 7dSeven pence in Victorian money, quoted as a guide for household accounting. It has no useful modern equivalent.
- YieldTwo pounds of potatoes for four or five as a side dish. Serve straight from the oven; the crust softens quickly once it cools.
Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, generally traced to the Dictionary of Cookery compiled in London in the 1870s and reissued and revised for decades after, sits at the point where French service met the English middle-class kitchen, and this is an English cook's version of pommes duchesse — the egg-enriched mash that professional kitchens piped into borders and rosettes. Here it is simply heaped into a dome and combed with a fork, without a forcing bag. Parmesan appears because hard grating cheese kept well and travelled well; it was a standard import in British grocers long before fresh Italian cheeses were available, and Victorian cookery books use it freely as a browning agent over vegetables and pasta. The costing in pence is given for nearly every entry in the book.