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Potato Biscuit
Boil some potatoes which have been pared the night before. When done put through the ricer into a bowl. Beat, adding to each pint 3 tablespoonfuls of rich sweet cream, 1 scant teaspoonful of salt and 1 scant tablespoonful of melted butter.
Lightly add just enough sifted flour to make them hold together. Roll out quickly half an inch thick. Cut in small squares and bake on a well-greased griddle.
A potato scone in all but name, leavened by nothing but steam and the lightness of the riced potato itself. The whole thing depends on restraint with the flour.
- The hinge: as little flour as possibleAdd flour a spoonful at a time only until the dough stops sticking to your hands, then stop. Every extra ounce turns these from tender to leaden, which is why the original refuses to name a quantity. Expect somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup per pint of potato, depending on how dry your potatoes are.
- "Pared the night before"Peeling ahead of time, presumably with the potatoes held in cold water to keep them from browning. Nothing in the method depends on it, and you can peel and boil the same day.
- A pint of potatoThis is a pint by volume of riced cooked potato, about 2 cups, from roughly 1 lb of raw potatoes. Use a floury variety such as russet; waxy potatoes give a gummy dough that will demand more flour.
- Rich sweet cream"Sweet" means unsoured, as opposed to the sour cream or clabber also kept in the period kitchen. Heavy cream is the closest match; half-and-half will work but gives a drier biscuit.
- Work while warmRice the potatoes as soon as they are drained and mix, roll and cut before they cool. Cold riced potato firms up and resists the cream, and the dough tightens as you fight it.
- Griddle heatA heavy pan or griddle at moderate heat, greased lightly. Roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side, until well browned and set through; too hot a surface colors the outside before the center loses its raw-flour taste.
- Yield and servingA pint of potato makes upwards of a dozen and a half small squares, depending on how you cut them. Serve hot off the griddle with butter; they are at their best within minutes and turn heavy once cold, though they reheat passably on a dry pan.
Potato breads of this kind belong to the thrift end of the bread chapter, where a cook stretched expensive white flour with something cheaper already in the house. Cooked potato was the standard extender in Britain, Ireland and America alike. Cooking on a greased griddle rather than in an oven is the older habit, from a time when a griddle over the fire was a great deal more certain than a range oven. Books of low-cost cookery kept such recipes in print long after richer households had moved on, since a pint of potato and a spoonful of butter cost a fraction of a proper biscuit dough.