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Baked Brown Potatoes
Boil, peel and mash a dozen potatoes.
Beat into them, while hot, salt and pepper to taste, a spoonful of onion juice, half a cup of milk and a tablespoon of butter. Have them perfectly smooth and creamy. Butter a long, shallow cake tin, and fill evenly with the potato, bake brown in a hot oven, cut out like a johnnycake and serve with luncheon or supper.
Frijoles (Spanish Beans) with Cheese Boil one pint of pink beans in plenty of cold water. As water boils away, add more (hot) water until beans are very tender. Season to taste with salt and red pepper. Put in frying pan a heaping tablespoon of lard and butter (half of each). When the beans are very hot in the pot, put in one small onion and mash them a little with a spoon, then put them into the boiling grease. Stir well, and allow to brown slightly. Ten minutes before taking from the frying pan, add seven tablespoons of grated American cheese. Serve with slices of hot buttered toast (thin) and sliced cucumbers with French dressing. - Margaret Greenleaf, Pasadena.
Two separate dishes run together on this page: a mashed-potato cake baked until brown, and Margaret Greenleaf's skillet frijoles. Both are straightforward once a few period terms are pinned down.
- A hot ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The potato is already cooked, so the only object is to set and brown the top; half an hour or so on an upper rack should do it, and a few minutes under the broiler will finish a pale surface.
- The hinge: mash while hot, and keep it stiffButter and milk go in while the potatoes are steaming or they will not absorb evenly. Half a cup of milk and one tablespoon of butter to a dozen potatoes is a deliberately dry mash — it needs to hold its shape in the pan and slice cleanly. Do not loosen it to the consistency of a modern side-dish mash.
- A dozen potatoesMedium potatoes of the period, so roughly 3 to 4 lb, serving eight to ten.
- Onion juiceA period standby, made by halving an onion and scraping the cut face against a grater, or by grating and pressing the pulp through a sieve. "A spoonful" is ambiguous here; a teaspoon to a tablespoon, enough to season without visible onion.
- Long, shallow cake tinA rectangular sheet or jelly-roll pan, not a deep baking dish. Spread the potato about three-quarters of an inch thick so it browns rather than steams.
- Cut out like a johnnycakeThe reference is to the pan-baked sort, cut in the tin into squares or diamonds and lifted out. Let the potato rest five minutes before cutting so the edges hold.
- Frijoles: pink beansOne pint dry beans is about a pound, and pink beans (pinto will stand in) will need two to three hours at a simmer unsoaked, longer if they are old. Salt near the end. The recipe assumes no soaking, which is fine, just slower.
- American cheese in 1900American cheese in this period -- this means a mild domestic cheddar, not the processed slice. Use a young orange cheddar or Colby, grated, and stir it in off the fiercest heat so it melts rather than seizes.
- Half lard, half butterThe recipe means one heaping tablespoon in total, half of each, not a spoonful of each. Bacon fat or oil substitutes fine, but do not skip the butter -- it carries the browning flavor.
Both dishes belong to the same practical impulse in turn-of-the-century American cookery: taking a plain, cheap staple and giving it a form fit for a luncheon or supper table, where something could be cut and served in neat pieces. Baking freshly made or leftover mashed potato into a browned cake appeared under various names, and the instruction to cut it "like a johnnycake" suggests the reader was expected to know cornbread baked in a shallow tin and cut in squares. The frijoles entry, credited to a contributor in Pasadena, is the more interesting document: it shows Mexican-Californian cooking reaching a wider readership, with the beans identified as "Spanish" and the seasoning limited to salt, red pepper and grated cheese. The suggested accompaniment of thin buttered toast and cucumbers in French dressing is Anglo-American luncheon convention wrapped around a borrowed dish.