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A baked potato pudding
Mix twelve ounces of potatoes boiled, skimmed, and mashed, 1 oz. of suet, quarter of a pint of milk, and 1 oz. of cheese grated fine; add as much boiling water as is necessary to produce a due consistence, and bake it in an earthen pan.
A plain economy pudding, closer to a baked mash than a dessert. The original gives no oven temperature and no time, so the useful work is in filling those gaps and reading the odd wording.
- "Skimmed" means skinned"Skimmed" most likely means skinned -- the potatoes are boiled, peeled and mashed. Nothing obvious is being skimmed off, and the likeliest reading is that the cooked potatoes are skinned while warm, though the wording is ambiguous.
- Weights to volumeTwelve ounces of potato is roughly two medium floury potatoes, giving about 1 1/2 cups mashed. A quarter pint of milk is 5 fl oz in imperial measure, a little over half a cup. One ounce of grated hard cheese is about 1/4 cup loosely packed.
- SuetBeef suet, shredded, was the standard cheap fat. Packet shredded suet works directly; butter at the same weight gives a softer, less savoury result. Chop or grate it fine so it melts through the potato rather than leaving pockets.
- "Due consistence"The boiling water is there to loosen the mash to a thick batter that just falls from the spoon, not a stiff paste. Add it a spoonful at a time; too much and the pudding bakes wet and heavy.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for 35 to 45 minutes, until set through and browned on top, suits the mixture. Puddings of this kind may well have gone in on the falling heat after the bread or roast came out.
- The earthen panThe receipt specifies only an earthen pan; a glazed earthenware or stoneware dish, buttered, will serve. A depth of an inch and a half to two inches gives a good ratio of browned surface to soft interior.
- SeasoningThe receipt calls for none. It needs salt and pepper, and a hard, sharp cheese carries it far better than a mild one.
- YieldFour modest side servings, meant to stretch a meal rather than end it.
Baked potato puddings sit in the long English tradition of the "pudding" as anything bound and cooked in a dish, sweet or savoury, and this one is squarely on the savoury, thrifty side: potato bulk, an ounce of suet for richness, an ounce of cheese for flavour, and water to make up the rest. Household recipes of this sort were often costed in ounces. Suet as the default kitchen fat, cheese used as a seasoning rather than a main ingredient, and the direction to bake in an earthen pan rather than a tin all point to a kitchen where the raw fat from the butcher's trimmings was cheaper than butter and glazed earthenware was the ordinary baking vessel. The dish is a close relative of later potato cakes and cheese-and-potato bakes.