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Hot Pot
1 1/2 pounds potatoes 3/4 pound onions 1 small tomato 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 1 ounce butter 1/4 pint milk Pepper and salt The onions and potatoes must both be weighed after they are peeled. Slice the onions and potatoes, and throw them into cold water. Bring them quickly to boiling point, and let them boil one minute--not more, then drain them. Put them into a baking dish with the tomato, which must be skinned and sliced. Add the chopped parsley, which must be sprinkled over the potatoes and onions, and mixed in. Season with pepper and salt. Pour in the milk, and break up the butter in bits, and place it over the top. It can be baked in a covered baking dish or an ordinary pie dish, and will take two hours to cook in a moderate oven.
A plain potato-and-onion bake that stands in for a meat hot pot. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the two-hour bake need translating.
- The hinge: weigh after peeling1 1/2 lb potatoes and 3/4 lb onions peeled means buying somewhat more, roughly 1 3/4 lb and a little under 1 lb respectively. Onions are half the weight of the potatoes here, and that ratio is what makes the dish taste of something rather than of boiled potato.
- Moderate ovenGenerally read as 350F (180C). The full two hours is not excessive for thick slices. The recipe says nothing about browning the top; it allows either a covered baking dish or an ordinary pie dish.
- 1/4 pint of milkIf the book is British, that is 5 fl oz, a scant 2/3 cup; if American, 4 fl oz, 1/2 cup. Either works — the milk is there to steam the potatoes, not to submerge them, and it should come no more than a third of the way up.
- 1 ounce butter2 tablespoons, dotted over the surface. It is the only added fat and the main source of richness, so do not reduce it.
- The one-minute boilThis is a blanch, not a par-cook. It takes the raw bite off the onions and rinses surface starch so the milk does not turn to paste. Drain thoroughly or the dish will be watery.
- Milk and tomatoThe acid from the tomato will curdle the milk slightly during a long bake. It is expected and unimportant once the potatoes have absorbed most of the liquid, but whole milk curdles less obtrusively than skim.
- SeasoningPotatoes and onions with no stock behind them need salt well beyond what feels comfortable — season each layer as you build it rather than only at the end.
- YieldServes four as a side dish, two or three as a main course; the recipe itself gives no number.
Hot pot proper is a Lancashire dish of mutton or lamb chops layered under sliced potatoes and baked slowly in a tall earthenware pot — the potatoes on top brown while the meat beneath stews in its own liquor. What appears here is that structure with the meat removed and onions promoted to fill the gap: three-quarters of a pound of onion to a pound and a half of potato is a far higher proportion than a garnish. Books of meatless cookery are often said to have worked by this method of substitution, taking familiar names from the standard repertoire and rebuilding them around vegetables, milk and cheese, so that a household giving up meat on religious, economic or reforming grounds could still put a recognisable dish on the table under a recognisable name.