Home › Vegetables › Mashed Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Boil as directed for plain boiled potatoes. When done mash quickly in a vegetable press or use a wire masher. To each six potatoes allow a piece of butter the size of a walnut, one gill of boiled milk or cream, a teaspoonful of salt and a dash of pepper. Beat with a wooden fork till very light. Serve in a heated, uncovered dish.
A sound method that predates the electric mixer, and better for it. The instructions that look decorative — hot milk, a wooden fork, an uncovered dish — are the ones doing the work.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. For six medium potatoes that is on the generous side; add it in stages and stop when the texture suits you.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout an ounce, or two tablespoons, by the usual period equivalence.
- Vegetable pressA potato ricer. It remains the best tool for the job: it breaks the potato into fine threads without smearing the starch, which is what turns mash gluey.
- Boiled milk, not coldCold dairy hitting hot potato cools the mass and makes it stiff and pasty. Heat the milk or cream until it just steams before it goes in.
- Beat with a wooden forkThe point is aeration without abuse. A food processor or a stand mixer run hard will rupture the starch granules and produce something closer to wallpaper paste; a fork, a spoon or a hand whisk is the right amount of violence.
- Uncovered dishNot fussiness. A lid traps steam, which condenses back into the potato and makes it watery. Serve the dish hot and open.
- SaltA full teaspoon for six potatoes is reasonable if the boiling water was unsalted. If you salted the water, start with half and taste.
- YieldSix medium potatoes serve four to six as a side.
Mashed potatoes reached print in English cookery in the eighteenth century and were thoroughly domestic by the time this book was written; a turn-of-the-century vegetable manual includes the recipe as a matter of course. The instructions here are aimed at the two faults such books complained of endlessly — lumps, and sogginess — hence the press, the boiled milk and the pointed insistence on an uncovered dish. The "piece of butter the size of a walnut" is a survival of pre-standardised measurement, still common in American and British books of the era despite Fannie Farmer's level-cup system having begun its takeover in the 1890s. A wooden fork was specified, though the recipe does not say why.