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Irish Stew No. 3
1 pound potatoes 3/4 pound of onions 1 ounce butter 1/2 pint milk Salt and pepper The potatoes and onions should both be weighed after peeling. Slice the potatoes and onions, and throw them into cold water; bring them quickly to boiling point, and let them boil for a minute. Drain them, and put them in a double pan; boil the milk, and pour it over them. Season with pepper, and add the butter. Stew for two hours and a half. Half a saltspoon of pepper and salt will season the stew nicely.
A wartime meatless stew that depends entirely on the double boiler: the milk never touches direct heat, so it cannot catch or curdle while the potatoes break down into their own sauce.
- The double pan is the hinge"Double pan" means a double boiler — a bowl or pan set over simmering water. Milk held for two and a half hours over direct heat will scorch and separate; over water it stays below boiling and the stew thickens gently as the potato starch releases.
- Half a pint of milkIf the book is American, that is 1 cup; if the measures are imperial, 10 fl oz. The recipe gives no way to settle which, so start at a cup and add more if the potatoes look dry partway through.
- A saltspoonA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. "Half a saltspoon of pepper and salt" reads as roughly an eighth of a teaspoon of each — very restrained by modern palates. Taste and correct at the end.
- One ounce butterTwo tablespoons. It is the only fat in the dish and matters more than the quantity suggests; do not cut it.
- Why the minute's boilThe brief boil and drain takes the raw bite off the onions and washes away loose surface starch, so the milk stays a sauce rather than turning to glue. Skipping it gives a sharper, gluier stew.
- Slice thickness and the long stewTwo and a half hours will reduce thin slices to purée. Cut potatoes about 1/4 inch thick if you want any pieces left; at 1/8 inch you are making a thick potato-onion soup, which is a perfectly good outcome.
- YieldServes two as a main dish or three or four as a side. It reheats well but thickens considerably; loosen with a little milk.
Meatless Cookery belongs to the First World War food-conservation literature, when American and British households were urged to spare meat for the armed forces and Allied civilians, and cookbooks filled with "meat substitutes" built on potatoes, pulses, cheese and milk. The traditional dish is mutton with potatoes and onions, and what remains here is everything but the meat. That is less of a cheat than it sounds, since the potato-and-onion base is much of what gives Irish stew its body — the potatoes are meant to fall apart and thicken the liquor. Milk stands in for the mutton broth, and the double boiler keeps it from catching.