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Potato Scallop
Take a deep baker and put on top of stove with a little butter in it. Slice 1 small onion in it and let it fry a few minutes. Take it from the stove and put 6 potatoes sliced thin in the pan in layers, putting pepper, salt and a little butter on each layer. Sprinkle a few breadcrumbs on top and pour ½ pint of milk over all.
Bake in moderate oven 1 hour. -Miss Grace Jackson, North Sydney, N.S.
A plain scalloped potato with no flour or cheese, thickened only by the potato starch itself. It works, but a few details in the wording matter.
- "Deep baker"A deep, heavy stovetop-to-oven dish — a cast iron Dutch oven or a heavy braiser. Any 2-quart oven-safe pan that can take direct heat will do; if you only have a baking dish, soften the onion in a skillet and transfer it.
- Moderate ovenAbout 350-375F. At that temperature an hour is right for thin slices; thicker slices will still be firm at the centre, so check with a knife tip before serving.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup in North American measure. Canadian and British imperial half-pints run to 10 fl oz, so anywhere from 1 to 1¼ cups is faithful.
- Slice thin, and do not rinseAbout 1/8 inch, ideally on a mandoline. The starch clinging to the slices is what binds the milk into a sauce — rinsing the slices gives you potatoes in thin milk.
- Six potatoesAssume medium-sized, roughly 2 lb. Waxy or all-purpose potatoes hold their layers; heavily starchy bakers will collapse into a mash, which some cooks prefer.
- CurdlingWhole milk alone can break at 350F over an hour, especially in a wide shallow pan. Covering for the first 40 minutes, then uncovering to brown, keeps it smooth; a splash of cream also helps.
- YieldFour as a side dish, two or three as a supper on its own.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell flour, and its contributed recipes came in by mail from housewives across the country — which is why this one carries Miss Grace Jackson's name and her Cape Breton town. Scalloped dishes take their name from the old escallop, food cooked and served in a shell or shallow dish, and by the late nineteenth century the word had come to mean almost anything sliced, layered with seasoning and baked in milk or sauce. This version is notably austere: no flour, no cheese, no ham, just onion softened in butter first, which is the one touch that lifts it. Potatoes, milk, butter and onion were what a Nova Scotia kitchen had on hand year-round, and recipes like this one filled the gap between the cellar and the next garden.