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Pepper and Salt (Mash the potatoes quite soft)
Mash the potatoes quite soft with the milk and the butter melted; add two ounces of cheese, pepper and salt to taste. Fill some patty-pans with this mixture, and brown them in the oven.
While hot, glaze each over with melted butter and the rest of the cheese; serve very hot in the pattypans.
A short Victorian savoury of mashed potato baked in small tins and finished with butter and cheese. The instructions assume you already have the potatoes cooked and a cook's judgement about quantities.
- The missing quantitiesOnly the cheese is specified: two ounces (about 55 g) for the mixture, plus an unstated "rest of the cheese" for the top. Potatoes, milk and butter are left to the cook. As a starting point, about 1.5 lb (700 g) of cooked floury potatoes, 4 tbsp warm milk and 2 oz butter is a plausible reconstruction for two ounces of cheese in the mash.
- Patty-pansThese are small shallow tartlet or bun tins, roughly 2-2.5 inches across, not the deep muffin cups sold today. A shallow twelve-hole bun tin is the nearest equivalent; buttered ramekins work if you want to serve in the vessel as directed.
- Oven heatThe recipe only says to brown them. A hot oven, 425-450F (220-230C), for 15-20 minutes gives colour before the potato dries out. A moderate oven will only heat the mixture through without the crust that is the point of the dish.
- The cheeseParmesan or a hard dry Cheddar suits the dish, and both appear commonly in savouries of this type. Both grate finely and brown well; a modern soft or high-moisture cheese will weep oil and slump instead of crisping.
- Mash texture"Quite soft" means smooth and slack enough to pipe or spoon into small tins, but not wet. Melt the butter into warm milk and beat it in while the potato is hot; cold dairy stiffens the mash and makes it harder to work smooth.
- The finishing glazeThe second application of butter and cheese goes on after baking, while the potatoes are still hot, and is meant to melt into a glossy coat rather than bake into a crust. If you want it browned, a minute under a hot grill is enough.
- Yield and servingThe quantities suggested above would fill about twelve small patty-pans, serving six as a savoury course or side. They stiffen and dry as they cool, so the instruction to serve very hot is practical, not decorative.
Late nineteenth-century British cookery books are full of small potato dishes of this kind: cooked potato enriched, moulded into little tins, browned, and sent up as a hot savoury or a vegetable course. The heading here does not appear to be the dish's own name. The reliance on grated hard cheese to glaze and gratinate a vegetable follows French practice, which was influential in "high-class" English cookery of the period, though the potato base is domestic.