Home › Fish › Pepper and Salt (Rasp twelve medium-sized round)
Pepper and Salt (Rasp twelve medium-sized round)
Rasp twelve medium-sized round potatoes, cut off a small piece of the top of one side of them, so that they can stand steadily, scoop out the centre, but be careful not to break them. Next prepare a stuffing with the breadcrumbs and herbs, season with pepper and salt, moisten with the cream and yolk of egg. Fill the potatoes with this stuffing, place them in a buttered sauté-pan side by side, brush them with oiled butter, and bake them in a moderate oven for twenty minutes.
A garnish of hollowed potatoes filled with a herbed breadcrumb forcemeat, meant to be sent up alongside a fish course. The original recipe reads as a continuation of a printed ingredient list, so the quantities for the stuffing are not on the page.
- Missing quantitiesThe instruction refers to "the breadcrumbs and herbs" and "the cream and yolk of egg" as though already listed. For twelve potatoes, a stuffing in the region of 4 oz fresh breadcrumbs, a handful of chopped parsley and thyme, 2-3 tablespoons cream and one yolk is consistent with the method, but the book's own figures are not given here.
- RaspIn this period "to rasp" a potato means to scrape the skin off with a coarse grater or the back of a knife, as with new potatoes, rather than to grate the flesh.
- The hinge: part-cook the potatoesTwenty minutes in a moderate oven is unlikely to cook a raw hollowed potato through. Either part-boil the shells before filling or allow considerably longer in the oven; test with a skewer through the wall before serving.
- Moderate oven350F, 175C. If the shells go in raw, expect closer to 45-55 minutes at that heat.
- Sauté-panA shallow, straight-sided metal pan, used here simply as an ovenproof dish. Any shallow baking tin that holds the potatoes upright and touching will do; crowding them keeps them from toppling.
- Oiled butterButter melted to a liquid; some cooks poured off the clear fat from the milky sediment, effectively clarifying it. Brushed on to colour the tops.
- Scooping outA small melon baller or a narrow teaspoon leaves an even wall. Aim for about a quarter-inch; thinner and the shells collapse when filled.
- YieldThe book gives no yield. Twelve potatoes would suit about six as a garnish, two apiece, or fewer as a dish on their own.
High-Class Cookery Recipes belongs to the late-Victorian school-of-cookery tradition, when British professional kitchens worked in a heavily French-inflected idiom and printed the ingredients above the method, which is why this page opens with its seasoning as a heading. Stuffed potatoes of this kind, pommes de terre farcies, were commonly served as a garnish or accompaniment rather than as a dish in their own right. The stuffing is an ordinary breadcrumb forcemeat of crumbs, chopped green herbs and egg yolk, moistened with cream rather than the suet or butter a meat forcemeat would carry, and the instruction to cut a steadying flat off one side suggests they were meant to stand upright on the dish sent to table.