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Potato (Cheese stands in need Apples)
the cheese stands in need. Apples are excellent for the brain, and intellectual writers should take them freely; but Potatoes, on the contrary, make one dull, peevish, and lazy, if eaten constantly, or in excess. Amongst foods proper for boys may be well included" writes Mr. Miles, "Potatoes, baked with sage, and onion. Take two large Potatoes, six onions of good size, two ounces of butter, two teaspoonfuls of powdered sage, and one ounce of bread-crumbs. Peel the Potatoes, and cut them lengthways into slices about half an inch thick; place six of these slices in a baking tin, or dish, which has been well greased with an ounce and a half of butter. In the meantime peel, and boil the onions for a quarter of an hour in a little salted water, and the sage (tied in a small muslin bag) together with them for the last five minutes. Chop the onions, and sage, and mix with the bread-crumbs, and half an ounce of butter, and spread the mixture thickly over the slices of Potato; then bake for one hour."
A Potato scoop was formerly a hand-implement in the form of a grated shovel for taking up Potatoes which had been first unearthed by a Potato-digger; the soil slips through the grated bars, which detain the tubers. The Irish peasant, who lives chiefly on Potatoes, has to take so much in bulk for obtaining adequate nourishment, that he gets the so-called Potato-belly. Because of their decided alkaline properties, and action, Potatoes are to be commended in a simple form at breakfast for gouty persons. The excretion of urates occurs more actively during the morning hours than throughout the rest of the day, and therefore corrective alkaline food is especially desirable at the first meal. But the Potatoes must not be fried in fat, or otherwise made indigestible merely to please the appetite. Plain Kegeree, (prepared with boiled mealv Potato instead of rice,) Potato snow, Potato bread, and Potato purée, are suitable dishes for this purpose; likewise eggs, and Potatoes. "Boil seven, or eight floury Potatoes, and mash them while quite hot; add one ounce of butter, the yolk of an egg, pepper, and salt; also, if liked, a little pounded onion, and some boiled, minced parsley. Roll the Potatoes into egg-like shape, brush them over with beaten egg, and cover with fine bread-crumbs well seasoned with salt, and white pepper; put them into the oven to brown (not frying them). The Potatoes should be boiled for half an hour, allowing one pound of these for three persons.
Two workable dishes are buried in this stretch of commentary: potato slices baked under a sage-and-onion crumb, and mashed potato shaped into eggs and browned in the oven. Both are written in Edwardian shorthand and neither gives a temperature.
- Oven heatFor the baked potato slices, a moderate oven of 350-375F for the full hour suits an assembly of raw potato and cooked onion. The crumbed potato "eggs" only need browning, so a hot oven, 425F for 15-20 minutes, is closer to the intent.
- The hinge: the potato is rawThe onions are boiled and the sage steeped, but the potato slices go into the tin uncooked. At the half-inch called for they should soften in the hour; covering the dish for the first part of the baking will stop the exposed edges leathering before the centre gives.
- Weights into spoonsTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons; the ounce and a half for greasing the tin is generous and can be halved. One ounce of breadcrumbs is roughly half a cup of fresh crumbs, or a scant quarter cup dried.
- Powdered sageTwo teaspoonfuls of dried powdered sage is assertive by modern standards; start with one teaspoon. The muslin bag dropped in with the onions for the last five minutes is simply a way of scenting the cooking water, and a tea infuser does the same job.
- "Kegeree" and "Potato snow"Kegeree is kedgeree, here made with mealy potato in place of rice. Potato snow is riced or sieved potato left loose and untouched by butter or cream, not mashed. Both are named as suggestions rather than given as recipes.
- Floury potatoes matterThe second dish specifies floury potatoes, and a dry, mealy variety - Russet, King Edward, Maris Piper - is what will hold the shape; a waxy potato mashes to a paste that slumps.
- Browning without fryingThe instruction not to fry is the whole point of the second dish, but an egg-and-crumb coating baked dry stays pale. Set the shaped potatoes on a greased tray and brush the crumbs lightly with melted butter or oil so they colour.
- YieldThe author's own guide is one pound of potatoes for three people; seven or eight potatoes is comfortably more than a pound, so the croquettes will stretch further than that. The baked dish is built on six slices cut from two large potatoes.
- Treat the medicine as period detailThe claims about apples feeding the brain, potatoes making one dull, and alkaline potatoes at breakfast correcting gout belong to 1900s dietetics, not to current nutrition. Cook the dishes; ignore the prescription.
This comes from the food-as-physic tradition of the late Victorian and Edwardian household compendium, where each foodstuff got an entry combining folklore, kitchen practice and confident medical advice. The gout passage rests on the once-popular theory that foods could be classed as acid- or alkaline-forming and that an alkaline breakfast would flush urates, though the objection to fried potato is framed in terms of indigestibility rather than alkalinity. The sage-and-onion mixture is the standard English stuffing for goose and roast pork, redeployed here as a meatless topping for a dish offered as "proper for boys". The aside about the potato scoop and the Irish "potato-belly" reflects a genuine nineteenth-century observation that a diet built almost entirely on tubers demands enormous bulk to supply enough energy.