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Scalloped Potatoes
6 medium sized potatoes 2 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons butter 3 cups milk 5 tablespoons bread crumbs 1 small onion 2 tablespoons flour Peel, and slice the potatoes, and arrange a layer in the bottom of a baking dish. Put a little of the finely minced onion, bits of butter and a sprinkle of salt over this. Dredge slightly with flour, and then place another layer of potato, and continue to fill the dish, arranging the ingredients in the same order as for the first layer. Heat the milk, and pour over the potatoes. Over all sprinkle the dry or buttered bread crumbs, and cook an hour or more in a moderate oven.
A plain layered potato gratin bound with hot milk rather than a made sauce. Everything hinges on slice thickness and giving it long enough for the starch to thicken the milk.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. At that heat an hour is the minimum; a deep dish of potatoes often wants 75 to 90 minutes before a knife goes through without resistance.
- Slice thin and evenAbout 1/8 inch, ideally on a mandoline. Thick or uneven slices are the usual reason the centre is still firm when the top has browned.
- Why the milk is heatedPouring it hot shortens the time the dish spends coming up to temperature. The recipe says to pour it over the potatoes; filling only to just below the top layer will keep the crumbs drier.
- CurdlingWhole milk baked for an hour will sometimes break, especially in a wide shallow dish. Substituting a cup of the milk with cream, or covering for the first 40 minutes, keeps it smoother. The flour dredged between layers is the only added thickener, so do not skip it.
- Dish sizeSix medium potatoes and three cups of milk suit a 2-quart baking dish, roughly 8 by 8 inches. In anything shallower the milk boils away before the potatoes soften.
- CrumbsBare crumbs scattered on top will scorch over a full hour. Toss them with a little of the butter, or add them for the last 20 minutes only.
- SaltTwo teaspoons across the whole dish is right for this quantity of potato and milk, but it must be distributed layer by layer as written or the top tastes seasoned and the bottom does not.
- YieldServes four as a main course, six as a side. It sets up considerably if left to stand 15 minutes out of the oven.
Scalloped dishes are often said to take their name from the old English collop, a slice of meat, which drifted into "scallop" and came to mean anything sliced thin, layered and baked in liquid with crumbs on top — though the name is just as commonly traced to the scallop shell such dishes were baked in, and the point is unsettled. Making the sauce in the dish, by dredging flour between the layers and pouring over scalded milk, seems to have been a common approach before the separate white sauce became the assumed first step; it saves a pan and a stage, and the result is looser and more milky than a modern gratin.