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Stuffed Potatoes No. 1
6 medium sized potatoes 1/3 to 1/2 cup milk or cream 2 to 3 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon salt Select well-shaped potatoes of about equal size. Bake until soft, then cut or break the potato at about the middle. Remove the contents, mash the potato, add salt, butter and sufficient cream or milk to cause the potato to beat up light. When very light, fill the skins with the seasoned potato, piling it up in irregular shapes. Set the stuffed potatoes in the oven for a few minutes to brown.
A straightforward twice-baked potato, written before oven dials were standard. The only real skill in it is getting the mash light before it goes back into the skins.
- Oven temperatureBake the potatoes at 400-425F until a skewer slides through, roughly 50-60 minutes for medium russets. The browning stage at the end wants the same heat, or a few minutes under the broiler.
- Choose a mealy potatoThe recipe specifies only size, but the method depends on a floury, mealy baker. Waxy red or new potatoes will not beat up light; they turn gluey no matter how much you whip them.
- Cut, don't break, if you want neat halvesThe instruction to "cut or break the potato at about the middle" allows either. Halving lengthwise gives sturdier, easier-to-fill boats; breaking crosswise gives the tall, irregular piles the recipe describes.
- Leave a shellThe original says only to remove the contents. Leave about 1/4 inch of potato attached to the skin so the shell holds its shape through the second bake.
- Warm the dairyHeat the milk or cream before beating it in. Cold liquid cools the potato and makes it harder to beat light, so you tend to add more than you need.
- Work while hotMash and beat immediately after scooping. Potato that has cooled sets up and beats heavy; a ricer or food mill gives the lightest result, and a food processor gives the worst.
- Salt levelA teaspoon of salt for six potatoes is about right by modern taste, but add half first and correct after the butter and milk go in.
- YieldSix potatoes serves six as a side, or three to four if served as a main dish. Reckon on one whole potato per person if it is standing in for meat.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in the English-speaking world during the First World War, when voluntary meatless days were promoted as a way of freeing up meat for armies and allies, and the potato — cheap, filling and domestically grown — did much of the heavy lifting. Treating a stuffed baked potato as a stand-in for meat reflects the period's nutritional thinking: a dish was considered to substitute for meat largely if it was substantial and satisfying at the center of a plate, well before protein content was routinely calculated. The technique itself is older than the wartime books, appearing in nineteenth-century household manuals as a way of making a plain baked potato company-worthy, and it survives essentially unchanged as the twice-baked potato.