Home › Extra-Special Company Cakes and Cookies › Fluffy Potatoes
Fluffy Potatoes
Boil and mash potatoes as usual. Season with hot milk, butter or margarine, salt, pepper and paprika. Beat well till fluffy and quite soft. Then, when just ready to serve, beat up an egg white stiff and fold it into the potatoes. Pile them high in a serving dish and slip under broiler to brown. Serve with a depression in center, filled with melted butter.
A plain mash lightened with beaten egg white and browned under the broiler. The recipe gives no quantities, so work from your usual mash and treat the egg white as the one addition that needs care.
- ProportionsFor about 2 lb of potatoes, figure 1/2 to 3/4 cup hot milk, 3 to 4 tablespoons butter, and one egg white. That serves four to six.
- Choose a floury potatoRussets or another starchy variety mash light and absorb the milk. Waxy red or new potatoes turn gluey when beaten hard, and the instruction here is to beat well.
- Milk must be hotCold milk stiffens and cools the mash, and reheating it after beating drives off the air. Scald the milk and add it in stages until the potatoes are soft enough to fall from the spoon.
- Fold the white at the last minuteThis is the hinge. Beaten white holds its air for only a few minutes against hot, heavy potato, so mash, season, beat, and only then whip the white and fold it in with a spatula. Do not beat it in with the mixer.
- Soft, not stiff"Quite soft" is deliberate. Potatoes stiff enough to hold a fork mark will not rise or lighten; they should slump slowly when piled.
- Broiler timingUse a shallow flameproof or ceramic dish, set it 4 to 6 inches from the element, and watch it. The peaks color in 2 to 4 minutes and go from brown to black quickly. The recipe specifies the broiler and gives no oven alternative.
- PaprikaTake this as the sweet, mild, unsmoked sort, used as much for color under the broiler as for flavor. Smoked paprika will read as a different dish entirely.
- The butter wellPress the depression with the back of a spoon before browning so the rim sets, then pour in melted butter just as it goes to the table.