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Potato Cakes
Take 2 cupfuls of cold mashed potatoes; mix well with the yolk of 1 egg. When well mixed, form into small rather flat round cakes. Put 2 tablespoonfuls of ham or beef drippings in a frying-pan, and when hot put in the cakes. Brown on one side, then on the other and serve.
A frugal use for leftover mashed potato, and it works as written. The main things worth knowing are the moisture of the potato and the fat you fry in.
- YieldTwo cups of mashed potato makes six to eight cakes about 2 1/2 inches across, enough for two or three people as a side. Keep them under an inch thick or the centre stays cold while the outside burns.
- The hinge: dry potatoCold mash made with a lot of milk or cream will slump in the pan. If the mixture will not hold a shape when pressed, work in a tablespoon or two of flour, or spread the mash on a plate and let it dry out in the refrigerator for an hour first.
- DrippingsHam or beef drippings would typically have been fat saved from earlier cooking rather than bought fat, and the ham fat in particular seasons the cakes. Bacon fat is the closest common substitute, and butter mixed with a neutral oil works if you want none of that flavour.
- Egg yolk onlyThe yolk binds without loosening the mixture the way a whole egg would. If you have a whole egg to use, beat it and add about half.
- SeasoningThe recipe calls for no salt at all, presumably because the mashed potato was seasoned when first made. Taste the mixture before shaping and add salt and pepper if it is flat.
- Heat and handlingMedium-high heat, and leave the cakes alone for three to four minutes a side. Turning them early is the usual cause of a cake that falls apart; a set brown crust is what holds them together.
- Chilling before fryingTwenty minutes in the refrigerator after shaping firms the cakes and makes them much easier to lift into hot fat.
Potato cakes of this kind belong to the long tradition of second-day cookery, where the point of a dish is that nothing from the first meal is thrown out. Books of low-cost recipes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lean heavily on this principle: cold mash, stale bread, meat trimmings and saved drippings each have their own set of dishes. The instruction to use ham or beef fat rather than butter is itself a cost note, since butter was bought and drippings were a by-product. Versions of the same idea appear across Europe and the British Isles under many names, and Irish and Scottish potato cakes, generally made with flour and cooked on a griddle, are close relatives rather than descendants of this particular fried form.