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Stuffed Potatoes
8 potatoes; whites of 4 eggs; 1/2 cupful of boiling milk; 1 tablespoonful of butter; seasoning.
Select only large and perfect potatoes. Wash and scrub well, but do not break the skin. Bake them for forty-five minutes in a moderate oven. When done, cut them in two lengthwise; scoop out the potato and place it in a heated dish and mash it well. Add the seasoning, butter, and milk. Beat all up together and add the whites of 2 eggs. Refill the skins with the mixture, and pour the whites of the other 2 eggs over the filled skins. Brown in the oven.
A straightforward twice-baked potato, with the period's habit of using egg whites both as a lightener in the filling and as a glaze on top. A few of the numbers want adjusting.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" in period usage is somewhere around 350-375F. At that heat, large baking potatoes will often want an hour or more rather than forty-five minutes; a skewer should meet no resistance at the centre. Forty-five minutes is more plausible in a hotter oven, or with smaller potatoes.
- Potato varietyChoose a high-starch baking potato — russet or Idaho — rather than a waxy salad type. Waxy potatoes mash gluey and will not take up the milk and butter.
- Do not pierce the skinsThe skins are the serving vessel here, so scrub firmly but avoid nicking them, and scoop with a spoon rather than a knife. Leave a shell about a quarter-inch thick or the halves collapse when refilled.
- Beating the whitesThe recipe does not say whether the whites are whipped. Beating the two whites for the filling to soft peaks and folding them in will give a lighter result, though the text as written simply has them beaten in with the rest. The two whites poured over the top can go on loosely beaten, and will set into a pale gloss.
- Hot milk, hot dishThe boiling milk and the heated dish are both deliberate. Cold milk on hot potato makes a heavy, pasty mash, and a cold bowl chills it before the butter emulsifies.
- SeasoningUnqualified "seasoning" in a recipe of this kind normally means salt and pepper, white or black; salt the mash more assertively than seems right — potato absorbs a great deal. A grating of nutmeg or a little grated cheese is in keeping if you want it.
- BrowningReturn the filled halves to a 425F oven, or under the broiler for two or three minutes, watching them. The egg-white coating goes from pale to scorched quickly.
- YieldEight potatoes cut lengthwise give sixteen halves — a side dish for eight, or a light supper for four with something green.