Vegetbles
Potato Cakes--No. 1 1 pint mashed potato (fresh or left over) 1 egg Milk or cream to moisten Beat the egg well, and add it to the mashed potato. Add sufficient milk or cream to make the potato soft enough to be put on an oiled pan in spoonfuls. Bake till nicely browned.
Potato Cakes--No. 2 1 pint potato (fresh or left over) 1 egg Milk or cream Flour Add the well-beaten egg to the potato, and milk enough to make the potato just a little softer than in the preceding recipe. Then add flour enough to make the potato stiff enough to be formed into cakes with the hands, but quite soft. Form into round, flat cakes. Brush them over with cream, and bake till nicely browned. When the quantity of milk and flour is rightly proportioned, these will remind one of soda biscuit.
Two versions of the same idea: a loose spoon-dropped potato cake and a stiffer hand-formed one. Neither gives an oven temperature, so most of the judgement falls on you.
- A pint of mashed potatoMeasure by volume, not weight: 2 cups of mashed potato, which is roughly 1 lb of potatoes before cooking. Leftover mash that has been refrigerated will be stiffer and will take more milk than the recipe implies.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature. A hot oven, in the region of 400-425F, suits these; allow roughly 20-25 minutes for No. 1 and a little longer for the thicker formed cakes of No. 2, turning the pan once if your oven browns unevenly.
- An oiled panThis is a greased baking sheet, not a frying pan. The whole point of the method is that the cakes brown in the oven rather than in fat, so use only enough oil to prevent sticking, or line with parchment.
- The hinge: how soft the mixture isBoth recipes live or die on consistency. No. 1 should just drop from a spoon and hold a mound; No. 2 should be soft enough to feel slack in the hand but firm enough to pat into a flat round. Add milk a spoonful at a time, since mashed potato absorbs unpredictably.
- Flour quantityNo. 2 gives no quantity. Start with about 1/2 cup to a pint of potato and add more only until the mass stops clinging to your palms; too much flour is what turns these leaden rather than biscuit-like.
- SeasoningNo salt is listed, perhaps because the mashed potato would already have been salted. Taste the mixture before shaping and correct it, or the finished cakes will be flat.
- "Soda biscuit"The comparison is to a plain baking-soda biscuit of the day: dry-crumbed, mildly risen, eaten hot. These cakes contain no leavening of their own, so the resemblance is one of texture and are best served straight from the oven.
- YieldA pint of potato with one egg makes about 8 cakes roughly 3 inches across, enough for four as a side dish.