Blanche Ring
STUFFED POTATOES
Bake in hot oven as many large potatoes as required. When done, remove end of potato without breaking the skin.
Scoop out the interior with a dessert spoon.
Mix with butter, milk, salt, pepper and boiled ham; minced.
Put back into shell of potato and sprinkle grated cheese on top.
Put back into oven and leave until cheese browns.
Then serve.
I have made the above with great success.
Lumenel Suicerely Thoi & Urir Fab-19-1916
THOS. A. WISE
H2O-OR AQUA PURA
I have no favorite dish-I like everything that's good. But drinking is a very different matter and there is one drink of which I am especially fond: the recipe is very simple but, to be thoroughly appreciated, it should be made with one's own hands. Take a large glass pitcher and wander quietly to the refrigerator and with a Delmonico ice pick, break off a large quantity of small pieces of ice; place them in the glass pitcher, cleanse thoroughly, then fill pitcher with common, ordinary Croton water and consume until satisfied.
This is my favorite beverage morning, noon and night. Sincerely, Thos A Wise
CHICKEN CREOLE
A nice fowl, about 4 lbs.
About a cup of water 1 cup of cream 1 cup of milk 1 onion (chopped) 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon of curry powder Cut the fowl as for fricassee.
Put in saucepan; add onion, water, pepper and salt.
Cook slowly with lid on until tender, then add parsley, curry powder, cream and milk and let simmer gently for twenty minutes.
The recipe gives no quantities at all — it scales to however many potatoes you bake — so the work is in judging proportions and oven heat.
- "Hot oven""Hot oven" in this period covers roughly 400-450F, so about 425F is a fair reading; a large russet takes about an hour, until a skewer slides through cleanly. The second, browning stage wants the same heat or a little more, or a few minutes under the broiler.
- Choice of potatoUse a floury baking potato — russet or Idaho — not a waxy new potato. The flesh has to mash light and absorb the butter and milk without turning gluey.
- Opening the shellSlicing off one end and scooping through the hole, as written, keeps the potato upright and holds the filling in. It is fiddly; splitting the potato lengthwise and scooping each half is easier and bakes faster, at the cost of the original's neat look.
- A dessert spoonRoughly two teaspoons, midway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. The recipe gives no reason for the choice, though a small bowl does let you scrape close to the skin without tearing it.
- Proportions to aim forPer large potato, about 1 tablespoon butter, 2 tablespoons milk, 2 tablespoons minced boiled ham, and 2 tablespoons grated cheese on top. Add the milk gradually — the mixture should hold its shape, not slump.
- Boiled hamIn 1916 this meant a wet-cured, mildly salted ham cooked in water and sliced. Any good deli-style cooked ham works; avoid dry-cured or country ham, which is far saltier and will overwhelm the salt already added.
- The cheeseNo variety is named. A firm grating cheese that browns well — aged Cheddar, Gruyere, Parmesan — is in keeping. Mild processed cheese will melt into a slick rather than colour.
- Yield and servingOne potato per person as a side dish, two as a light supper. They reheat acceptably at 375F but the skins lose their crispness.
Stuffed baked potatoes appear in late nineteenth-century American cookery under names such as "stuffed potatoes"; the trick of scooping, enriching and re-baking made a cheap vegetable look like a made dish, which suited both restaurant kitchens and households keeping up appearances. This volume collected favourite recipes from stage performers — food a touring player could eat late, after the curtain, in rented rooms or a hotel dining room. Blanche Ring (1871-1961) was one of the biggest musical-comedy names of the era, remembered for the singalong numbers she made hits, and her note that she has "made the above with great success" is the kind of personal endorsement these celebrity cookery collections traded on.