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Potato Soufflé
Steam six good-sized potatoes in their jackets. When done peel and mash them. Add to them while hot one tablespoonful of butter, a half pint of cream, one teaspoonful of salt and pepper to taste. Beat till smooth and
A rich mashed-potato base of the sort that was folded with beaten egg whites and baked until puffed. The measurements are straightforward once the old liquid units are converted.
- Half a pint of creamThat is one US cup. For six medium potatoes (very roughly 2 lb) it makes a loose, rich puree -- loose enough to fold into without deflating whatever is beaten in.
- Steaming in the jacketsThe point is dryness. Boiled peeled potatoes take on water and the finished dish slumps; steamed skin-on they stay mealy. Use a floury variety such as russet, not a waxy salad potato.
- Peel and mash while hotPotato starch turns gluey as it cools and is worked. Peel them as soon as you can handle them and pass them through a ricer or food mill rather than beating them in a machine.
- "Beat till smooth"Smooth here means no lumps at all; lumps in the base will show in the finished dish.
- How a potato soufflé is finishedHow a potato souffl ext here breipe text here breaks off mid-sentence, so the finishing is missing. A dish of this name would be completed by working in the yolks, folding in beaten whites and baking in a buttered dish until risen and browned; no oven heat or baking time is given on this page. Soufflees are served immediately, as they fall quickly out of the oven.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt for 2 lb of potato is modest by modern taste. Season the purée assertively before any whites go in, since folding is no time to be stirring in more salt.
- YieldNo yield is stated; six potatoes with a cup of cream would serve about six as a side dish.
The vegetable soufflé was a fixture of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookery instruction, when the technique — a flavoured base lightened with beaten egg white and set by oven heat — was taught as a method to be applied to whatever was at hand: cheese, spinach, corn, salmon, potato. A soufflé could be made cheaply, turning a few pounds of a staple crop and some cream into a dish fit for the head of the table. The name is simply the French past participle of souffler, to blow or puff up, and it carried enough continental prestige that domestic-science writers used it freely, even when the contents were as plain as this.