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Stuffed Potatoes (Good-sized potatoes 1 gill)
6 good-sized potatoes, 1 gill of hot milk, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1 teaspoonful of salt, Dash of pepper.
Bake the potatoes till done, then cut in halves and with a spoon scrape out the potato into a hot bowl. Leave sufficient potato in the skins to keep them in shape. Mash the potato fine, add the butter, hot milk, salt and pepper. Beat until very light, then stir in carefully the well-beaten whites of eggs. Fill the skins with this mixture, heaping them up. Brush over with yolk of egg and put in the oven till golden brown.
A straightforward twice-baked potato, distinguished by the beaten egg whites folded in at the end. The recipe assumes you know your oven; here are the numbers it leaves out.
- A gillHalf a cup (4 fl oz) of milk for six potatoes. Heat it before adding — cold milk chills the potato and stiffens it, which is why the recipe specifies hot milk and a hot bowl.
- Baking the potatoes400F for 50-60 minutes for a large russet, until a skewer meets no resistance. A floury baking potato mashes lightest; a waxy one will not.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe hinge: stir carefully -- The whites are what make this dish worth the trouble. Beat them well, as the recipe says, and work them in gently with a spatula rather than beating them; heavy mixing knocks the air out and you are left with ordinary stuffed potatoes.
- The two eggsWhites go into the filling, yolks are the glaze. Only one yolk is really needed for six potatoes; loosen it with a teaspoon of water or milk so it brushes thin and browns evenly rather than sitting in streaks.
- Returning to the oven"Till golden brown" means about 15-20 minutes at 400F, or 2-3 minutes under a broiler if the filling is still hot. Watch the glaze rather than the clock.
- Scraping the skinsLeave roughly a quarter-inch of potato on the shell. Any less and the halves slump when filled; the recipe's warning about keeping their shape is the reason to work with a teaspoon rather than a large spoon.
- YieldTwelve halves, serving six as a side dish. They reheat well but will not rise a second time.
Stuffed or twice-baked potatoes appear across late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American and British cookery books, part of a broader interest in making a plain, cheap vegetable presentable at table. The folded egg white here is a borrowing from soufflé technique, which is why some contemporary books call such a preparation a potato soufflé. Hence the fussy touches of hot milk, beaten whites and an egg-yolk glaze on something as ordinary as a baked potato.