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Stewed Potatoes
Pare six potatoes and cut into dice. Throw them into cold water fifteen minutes. Drain, cover with boiling water and boil ten minutes after they begin to boil. Then drain off every drop of water, put the potatoes in a double boiler, dredge with a tablespoonful of flour, add a tablespoonful of butter, half a pint of milk; cover and cook
A plain milk-stewed potato dish that depends almost entirely on how thoroughly you drain the parboiled dice. The text breaks off mid-instruction, so the finishing time has to be inferred.
- The hinge: drain completely"Every drop of water" is not rhetorical. Leftover cooking water thins the milk and prevents the dredged flour from binding, giving a grey liquid instead of a light sauce. Return the drained dice to the hot dry pan for a few seconds to steam off surface moisture.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup in American measure. If the book is British, a half pint is 10 fl oz; either amount works, the larger giving a looser stew.
- Cold-water soakThe fifteen-minute soak rinses surface starch off the cut dice, which may help them hold their shape. Skipping it gives a cloudier, more porridge-like result.
- Potato varietyChoose a waxy or all-purpose potato — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, fingerling. A russet cut into dice and boiled ten minutes is more likely to break down in the double boiler.
- Parboiling timeTen minutes at a full boil is close to done for half-inch dice. Test with a knife tip: they should yield but still resist, since they finish cooking in the milk.
- Finishing in the double boilerThe unwritten remainder is roughly 10 to 15 minutes covered over simmering water, until the flour thickens the milk and the potatoes are tender. The double boiler exists here only to prevent scorching; a heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirred, does the same.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is specified; the cook was presumably expected to season by taste. Salt the parboiling water and again at the end; white pepper and a little chopped parsley are common additions.
- YieldSix medium potatoes serve four as a side dish.
Stewed potatoes in milk belong to the large family of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century "creamed" vegetables — potatoes, onions, celery, cabbage — in which a flour-thickened milk sauce turned a cheap staple into something fit for a served course. The method here is a shortcut: flour dredged directly over the hot vegetable rather than cooked first into a roux, which works well enough as long as the potatoes are dry and the mixture is stirred. Domestic-science writers of the period were arguing that vegetables deserved as much technique as meat, and that boiling them to death in a great deal of water was a national failing. The insistence on draining off every drop of water, and on gentle finishing heat in a double boiler, is that argument in miniature.