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Creamed Potatoes
Peel and boil white mealy potatoes, till perfectly done. Take out one at a time from the saucepan, which must be left on the fire. With a large spoon, mash perfectly fine; add salt, a heaping tablespoonful butter and a teacup rich milk. Stir rapidly ten or fifteen minutes and send hot to the table. It is much lighter when well creamed and beaten.--Mrs. S. T.
A plain mash whose whole point is heat and aeration: everything is kept over the fire so the potatoes never cool while being worked. Two details need translation, and one instruction needs contradicting.
- TeacupA teacup in this period is not a full measuring cup; conversions vary, and it is reckoned anywhere from about 4 to 6 fl oz. Add the milk warm and in stages rather than all at once.
- White mealy potatoesRussets or any high-starch baking potato. Waxy reds and new potatoes will not break down to the light texture the recipe is after.
- The one-at-a-time methodThis is the hinge of the recipe. Leaving the pan on the fire and lifting out a single potato at a time keeps the rest steaming hot, so the mash never chills and stiffens. A modern equivalent is to drain, return the potatoes to the dry hot pan for a minute to steam off, then rice them straight into warmed butter and milk.
- Ten or fifteen minutes of stirringDo not take this literally with a mixer or food processor. Prolonged mechanical beating ruptures the starch cells and turns mashed potato gluey. Vigorous work with a wooden spoon or a hand masher for two or three minutes gets the lightness intended; the long time in the original reflects hand tools and the need to keep incorporating air while the mass was still very hot.
- Butter and saltA heaping tablespoon is generous but not lavish for two pounds; salt the boiling water as well as the finished mash, since unsalted potato flesh is hard to correct later.
- YieldNo quantity of potatoes is given. Two pounds, about six medium, with the butter and milk as written, serves four.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many entries close with initials like "Mrs. S. T." rather than a house style. The emphasis on beating, on rich milk, and on the word "creamed" marks a dish judged by texture rather than by substance. Note also what is absent. There is no pepper, no cream proper, no garlic and no cheese, and the potatoes go to the table the instant they are done. The insistence on "white mealy" varieties may reflect a market in which potatoes were sold by named sort and cooks knew which ones would fall apart obligingly in the pot.