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Surprise Balls
Form mashed potatoes into balls and with a teaspoon make a depression in the top of each. Mix one cup of grated cheese with salt, celery salt, and butter, and put one teaspoon into the hollow of each potato ball. Mold the ball so that the stuffing is concealed and brown in the oven or sauté.
A straightforward stuffed potato croquette with no quantities beyond the cheese. The details below fill in what the original assumes a cook already knows.
- Potato consistency is the hingeThe mash must be stiff and fairly dry or the balls slump and split in the oven. Use a floury baking potato, dry the cooked flesh over low heat for a minute before mashing, and bind with an egg yolk if it still feels loose.
- Oven temperatureThe book says only "brown in the oven." Use 425F on a greased or parchment-lined sheet, 20 to 25 minutes, turning once. Anything cooler dries the potato out before it colours.
- "Sauté" here means shallow-fry"Saute" here means cooking in a shallow layer of hot fat rather than a dry pan. Roll the balls in fine crumbs first if you fry them, or the surface tears when you turn them.
- Celery saltStill sold, still the same thing: ground celery seed cut with salt. It is assertive, so a quarter teaspoon per cup of cheese is plenty, and reduce the plain salt accordingly.
- Which cheeseAmerican "grated cheese" in a book of this kind generally meant a firm yellow Cheddar-type. Anything that melts to a puddle will find the seam and leak; a drier aged cheese, or Cheddar cut with a little grated Parmesan, holds better.
- Sealing the fillingPinch the depression closed and roll the ball smooth between the palms, then chill the formed balls for 20 minutes before cooking. Cold potato holds its shape through the first blast of heat.
Potato-and-cheese balls of this kind belonged to economical, meatless cookery: cheap, filling, made from leftovers, and shaped to look like something deliberate rather than something salvaged. The name is doing the work here -- a plain potato ball with a molten centre presented as a small entertainment at the table, a way to make an economical dish feel like a course.