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Potatoes, Sacked
Take some large potatoes, wash them very clean, bake them about forty-five minutes, or till soft, and cut a round piece off the top of each one. Scrape out the inside carefully, taking care not to break the skin, and set aside the empty cases with the covers. Mash the insides very smoothly, working into the mass a half tea-spoonful each of butter and cream for every potato. Season with salt, pepper, and grated cheese, work it very soft with milk, and put into a saucepan to heat, stirring to prevent burning. When very hot, stir in one beaten egg for six potatoes. Boil up once, fill the skins with the mixture, replacing the caps, return them to the oven for three minutes, and serve upon a napkin in a deep dish.
This is a twice-baked potato under an older name, and it works well once two of its timings are adjusted. The hinge is the egg: the original says to boil the mixture up once after adding it, which will scramble it into threads.
- The eggBeat the egg into the mash off the heat, once it is hot but no longer boiling. Returning it to a boil, as written, sets the egg in visible curds instead of binding the mixture.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven temperature. At 400-425F large baking potatoes will generally take longer than the 45 minutes stated, though the original already qualifies this with "or till soft"; test with a skewer that meets no resistance at the centre.
- The final three minutesThe filling goes back in boiling hot, so three minutes is only meant to warm the shells through. If you want the tops set and the cheese coloured, give them 10-15 minutes at 400F or a few minutes under the broiler.
- Butter and cream quantitiesHalf a teaspoon each per potato is restrained by modern standards, though the recipe then loosens the mash with milk. A tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of cream per large potato gives a richer result, with milk added only if it is still stiff.
- Cheese"Grated cheese" in a book of this kind most likely means a dry hard cheese, such as an aged Cheddar or a Parmesan-type. Both work; keep a little back to scatter on top before the second bake.
- Handling the shellsLeave about an eighth of an inch of potato attached to the skin. Scraped completely bare, the cases slump when filled. Work while the potatoes are hot enough to mash smoothly but cool enough to hold.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen napkin in the dish was a common serving convention of the period, and would have taken up steam under the potatoes. It is optional now.
- YieldOne potato per person as a side dish. The egg is scaled at one per six potatoes, so a batch of six is the natural unit.
"Sacked" here appears to refer to the potato's own skin used as a sack or bag, one of a family of names for stuffed vegetables served in their own casings; other books of the period use "in cases" and "in their jackets" for much the same idea. The addition of egg to bind and lighten the mash follows the same logic as a pomme duchesse.