Potatoes
In boiling potatoes, choose tubers, if possible, which are of the same size. When this cannot be done, put the larger potatoes at the bottom of the saucepan, the small ones on top.
Wash, pare, and put in cold water to prevent them from becoming discolored. During the winter, when potatoes grow old and soft, soak for two hours before cooking. Put in boiling salted water and cook until soft.
Drain and serve in a dish with folded napkin over them.
Baked Potatoes. a Select the smoothest and most wholesome potatoes for baking.
Scrub with a vegetable brush and lay in a baking pan. They will require forty minutes in a hot oven. Serve immediately or they are apt to become soggy.
Mashed Potatoes.
Take boiled potatoes and put them through a potato ricer, add butter, milk, pepper, and salt, and beat with ▲ fork until fluffy. Heap lightly in a dish and, if you wish, brown them over the top.
Scalloped Potatoes.
Cut potatoes in thin slices, put in layers in a baking dish sprinkled with pepper and salt, dredged with flour, and with a little butter here and there. Pour hot milk over it, until the milk can be seen through the potatoes, sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake in a hot oven for an hour.
Potatoes Baked on Half Shell.
Bake 6 or 8 good-sized potatoes; as soon as they are soft, cut in halves lengthwise, scoop out the inside, mix with butter, cream, pepper, and salt, and the whites of 2 eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Whip the potato until white and fluffy, then put back into the skins and rake them with a fork until they have a rough appearance on top. Return to the oven, and bake until brown on top.
Potato Omelet.
A compact set of five potato methods from the era before anyone printed an oven dial number. The proportions are left to judgment throughout, which is workable once the temperatures and a few habits are translated.
- "Hot oven" means 425-450F"Hot oven" -- Both the baked and the scalloped potatoes call for a hot oven, which in books of this period is generally read as roughly 400-450F; 425F is a workable figure.
- Baking time is size-dependentForty minutes at 425F suits a medium potato of about 6 oz. Large baking potatoes need 55-70 minutes; test with a skewer rather than the clock.
- Let baked potatoes ventThe warning about sogginess is the real point of that paragraph. Split or pierce each potato the moment it leaves the oven so steam escapes, and do not hold them wrapped or covered.
- Scalloped potatoes at an hourSliced thin, meaning about 1/8 inch, and covered in hot milk, an hour at 425F is roughly right, but cover the dish for the first 30-40 minutes or the top crumbs will darken long before the centre softens.
- Soaking old potatoesThe two-hour winter soak was for shrivelled cellar-stored tubers. Modern stored potatoes rarely need it; what does still help is the cold water after paring, which keeps cut surfaces from greying.
- Start in boiling or cold waterThe instruction to put them into boiling salted water works for cubes and small whole potatoes. For large whole potatoes, starting in cold water gives a more evenly cooked interior, since the outside will otherwise be collapsing before the middle is done.
- The folded napkinA cloth napkin laid over the drained potatoes absorbs escaping steam so the surfaces stay dry and floury. A clean tea towel does the same thing.
- Half shells: quantitySix to eight potatoes filled as directed serve six to eight as a side dish. The recipe has the stiffly beaten whites mixed in and the potato whipped until white and fluffy; they cook through during the browning.
- No ricerA ricer or food mill gives the fluffy result described. A food processor or blender turns cooked potato gluey within seconds and should not be substituted.
Potatoes appear in turn-of-the-century American household manuals as an everyday vegetable, and this book gives the methods in a run rather than as separate numbered recipes: boiled, baked, mashed, scalloped, and stuffed. The reference to potatoes growing "old and soft" during the winter points to the period before year-round shipping and controlled-atmosphere storage, when a household worked through a stock bought or grown in autumn that sprouted and shrivelled as spring approached; cookbooks of the period sometimes advised soaking late-winter tubers. The potato ricer called for in the mashed potatoes was, by most accounts, in use as a hand tool by around this period, and its use suits the dry, floury mash described here.