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Potato Puffers
Mrs. R. M. Dillon. 1 C mashed potatoes, seasoned for table 1 egg nuts. 1/2 C flour 1 level t baking powder Mix well and roll in small fingers, frying in deep fat like dough- Mrs. Smock.
A short community-cookbook entry with the usual telegraphic shorthand and one obvious typesetting scramble. Read it as: mashed potato, egg, flour and baking powder, rolled into fingers and deep-fried like doughnuts.
- The garbled line"1 egg nuts." is almost certainly displaced type: the word "nuts" appears to belong to "like dough-nuts" at the end of the instructions, where the hyphen breaks across the line. The ingredient is simply one egg. The second name may belong to an adjoining entry that has run together with this one, though the page gives no way to be sure.
- AbbreviationsC is one cup, t is one level teaspoon. So: 1 cup mashed potato, 1 egg, 1/2 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder.
- "Seasoned for table"This means mash already finished as it would be served, i.e. seasoned rather than plain boiled potato; the recipe adds no seasoning of its own, so taste the mixture before frying.
- Potato moisture is the hingeVery wet or creamy mash will not hold a finger shape and will drink fat. If the dough will not roll cleanly, work in flour a tablespoon at a time rather than adding liquid. Chilling the mixture 20 minutes makes shaping much easier.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives none, only "deep fat like dough[nuts]". Period doughnut frying was judged by eye or by the old test of browning a cube of bread, which corresponds roughly to 365-375F on a modern thermometer. Below that the puffers absorb grease; much above it the outside colours before the baking powder has lifted the centre.
- Size and timingKeep the fingers no thicker than a thumb so the middle heats through; two to three minutes, turning once, gives an even brown. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- YieldOne cup of mash will make only a small quantity, perhaps a dozen little fingers on a rough estimate, enough for two or three as a side dish. Mix it shortly before frying, since the baking powder begins acting as soon as it is wetted.
Community and society cookbooks of the early twentieth century are full of dishes like this one: a use for yesterday's mashed potatoes, dressed up enough to serve to company at luncheon. Deep-fried potato batters go under many names in period books — potato puffs, potato croquettes, potato fingers — and the comparison to doughnuts suggests this was a familiar technique in a kitchen that already fried at home. The double attribution to Mrs. R. M. Dillon and Mrs. Smock reflects how these books were assembled: recipes were gathered from many contributors and set in type in a hurry, and errors like the stray "nuts" were common enough.