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Boiled Potatoes (Peel the potatoes throw them)
Peel the potatoes, throw them into cold water, then put them in a kettle and cover with boiling water. Do not give them a tremendous bath, simply cover them. Put on the lid of the kettle and boil slowly until the potatoes are soft enough to admit a fork easily. This will take about thirty minutes. Remember, if you allow the potatoes to remain in the water one moment after they are done, they become waxy and heavy, and nothing you can do will restore them to their mealy condition. The moment they are tender, drain them, sprinkle with salt, stand on the back part of the range uncovered, giving them an occasional tossing. In a few moments the potato will be mealy and dry, the outside starch cells shining like silver. All varieties and even potatoes not strictly first-class, if treated in this manner, will be comparatively good.
A method rather than a formula, and the method still holds. The instruction that matters is the last one: drain the instant a fork goes in, then dry the potatoes over heat before they go to the table.
- The hingePotatoes left sitting in their cooking water keep absorbing it and turn heavy and waxy. Drain the moment a fork slides in without resistance, and do not let them sit.
- "Back part of the range"On a wood or coal range this was the cool end, warm but not fierce. On a modern hob, return the drained potatoes to the dry pan over the lowest heat for two or three minutes, uncovered, shaking now and then until the surfaces look floury.
- Why cover with boiling waterStarting peeled potatoes in already-boiling water shortens their time in the pot. Many cooks now start potatoes in cold water for even cooking through to the centre; either works if you keep the boil gentle, as the text says.
- Thirty minutes is a maximumThirty minutes is approximate -- The recipe says 'about thirty minutes', which assumes large whole potatoes. Cut into even 2-inch pieces they will generally be tender in 15 to 20 minutes. Test early rather than trusting the clock.
- Variety mattersThe "mealy" result the author wants comes most readily from a floury potato — russet, Idaho, King Edward, Maris Piper. Waxy salad potatoes are unlikely to dry to shining starch cells however carefully they are handled, though the author here claims all varieties benefit from the method.
- SaltThe recipe salts after draining, which seasons only the surface. Salting the cooking water, about a tablespoon per gallon, seasons the flesh.
- The cold-water soakThrowing peeled potatoes into cold water keeps them from browning while you finish peeling the rest. It also rinses off surface starch. Do not leave them soaking for hours or they lose flavour.
- YieldAllow roughly 6 to 8 oz of potato per person as a side dish.
Boiled potatoes look like the least interesting thing a cookbook could print, which is exactly why turn-of-the-century American household writers kept printing them: the promise here is that technique can rescue an indifferent potato, and for cooks who bought whatever the grocer had, that was a real claim. The obsession with "mealiness" runs through nineteenth-century English and American cookery writing loury and dry, and a waterlogged one was a sign of a careless kitchen. The drying step on the cool end of the range is often said to have been common advice in the period, and it survives today as the shake-dry that precedes any decent roast or mash. The phrase "the outside starch cells shining like silver" reflects the popular scientific vocabulary of domestic-science writing of the day, when cooking schools were teaching housekeepers to think about food in terms of cells, starch and albumen.