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Left-Over Potatoes
STUDY all sorts of methods for making warmed-up potatoes good and so different that they will not taste alike twice. One day there may be a suspicion of onion about the dish, another the rich flavor given by a spoonful beef extract, a dash chives, parsley, cayenne, or celery, or they may appear au gratin with a delicate cheese flavor. Mashed potato may be warmed again or reappear in a dozen different ways.
There are a few rules to remember in the keeping of left-over potatoes.
Never put them hot into the refrigerator. Do not allow them to stand in an uncovered dish. They will acquire a tough, disagreeable skin, and are reduced to nothing by paring.
Use cold potatoes before they are two days old. In hot weather they will not keep more than twenty-four hours. The sense of smell will speedily reveal to you if they have soured. In hot weather use potatoes as often as possible in a salad. In this, too, seek variety. There are endless recipes for potato salads. Do not make a salad of old potatoes, the newer they are the more satisfactory the salad. In Germany, potatoes for a salad are always boiled in their skins, and it is a fact that they taste better than when pared before cooking. The neatest method for preparing them is to cut the potatoes into cubes about half an inch square or in tiny balls with a potato scoop. Do not cut them too thin or small. They break, and nothing looks more uninviting than a mushy potato salad. Potatoes absorb a great deal of dressing, and they ought to marinate at least an hour before being served.
One of the most acceptable of potato salads is a combination of potato and pickled beet with Worcestershire Sauce and onion juice. Another is made with finely sliced onions as a flavor, and a sprinkling of chopped tarragon, parsley, and chervil. A third has celery and chopped cabbage with minced pickle and a hard-boiled egg. Mushrooms and minced pickle are a favorite addition to a potato salad, while lettuce or celery enters into the make-up of others. There are a few things among vegetables that will combine well with potatoes.
Cold peas are good, so are tomatoes, green peppers, olives, asparagus, red cabbage, cauliflower, capers, turnips, carrots, cucumbers, or string beans.
Sometimes a relish is added to the potato salad by a few slices of salt salmon, several anchovies, or sardines. Sweet potatoes may be put through the potato ricer and converted into croquettes or a pudding or pie. They may be glazed with sugar and butter, warmed in cream, or make an excellent soufflé. Another way is to cut them in thick slices, dip in flour, egg, and crumbs, and fry in deep fat, or slice them into a fritter batter, and fry.
Delmonico Potatoes. 5 cold potatoes, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 cupful milk, teaspoonful salt, Dust pepper, cupful grated cheese.
Cut the potatoes into fine dice, make a white sauce from the butter, flour, milk, and seasonings, and toss the potatoes lightly into the sauce.
Turn into a baking dish, sprinkle with MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK grated cheese, and bake till light brown.
The bulk of this entry is advice on handling cold boiled potatoes, closing with a workable gratin. A few of the quantities have lost their fractions in printing, and one piece of storage advice is worth updating.
- The missing fractions"teaspoonful salt" and "cupful grated cheese" have each lost a fraction in typesetting, as printed vulgar fractions often did. A half is the likeliest reading: 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour, 1 cup milk, about ½ tsp salt, and about ½ cup grated cheese over five potatoes' worth of dice.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature, only "bake till light brown." Bake at 400F until the top browns, roughly 20-25 minutes; the contents are already cooked, so the only object is heating through and colouring the cheese.
- The hinge: dice, do not crumbleCold potatoes fall apart if handled warm or cut small. Chill them thoroughly, and fold them into the sauce off the heat with a spatula rather than stirring. The Delmonico recipe asks for a fine dice; the half-inch cube belongs to the salads described above, where the author warns that anything thinner breaks up.
- Storage, revisedTwo days is conservative by modern standards -- cooked potatoes keep three to four days covered and refrigerated at 40F or below. The genuine hazard the author does not name is the opposite one: cooked potatoes left at room temperature for hours, particularly wrapped, can support bacterial growth. Cool them quickly and get them cold.
- "Never put them hot into the refrigerator"This was true of an icebox, where a hot dish melted the ice and warmed everything around it. A modern refrigerator handles it, and rapid cooling is now the safer practice; spread the potatoes out to cool for a few minutes, then refrigerate.
- Beef extractThe "spoonful beef extract" means a concentrated meat paste of the Bovril or Liebig type. A teaspoon of any modern beef base or demi-glace concentrate does the same job; it is salty, so hold back on the seasoning until you have tasted.
- The cheese"Delicate cheese flavor" points to a mild American or a young cheddar, not a sharp aged one. Gruyère or a mild cheddar both melt cleanly here; anything very dry will granulate in the sauce.
- YieldFive potatoes with a cup of sauce serves about four as a side; use a shallow baking dish large enough to hold the dice in a thin layer.
This is household economy writing rather than cookery proper -- the chapter's purpose is to keep yesterday's boiled potatoes out of the bin, and the long list of salad combinations is really a list of ways to avoid serving the same thing twice. The note that Germans boil potatoes in their skins for salad is accurate and still standard practice; skin-on boiling keeps the flesh from waterlogging, which is why the resulting cubes hold their edges in dressing. Delmonico potatoes take their name from the New York restaurant of the Delmonico family, which by the late nineteenth century lent its name to a great many dishes it may or may not have originated, in much the way "Newburg" and "à la Russe" circulated. The version here -- diced potato in a béchamel, cheese on top, browned -- is the plain domestic form, and the name seems to have attached to a manner of serving rather than a fixed formula.