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Stuffed Potatoes
6 medium size potatoes 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 teaspoon pepper 1/3 cup hot milk Wash potatoes but do not cut. Bake from 40 to 45 minutes. When done lay potatoes on sides, with sharp knife cut thin slice from each, scrape out potato, pass through ricer or mash, mix with seasonings and beat until very light. Pack lightly into potato shells, brush with little white of egg and brown in quick oven. Serve each with tiny sprig of parsley and a dash of red pepper on top. Serves 6.
A twice-baked potato from the era when "modernistic" meant streamlined presentation. The original gives no temperature for the first bake, so the numbers below fill the gap.
- Oven for the first bakeThe original gives no temperature; 400-425F suits. Medium potatoes may need rather longer than the 40-45 minutes stated; test with a skewer that slides through with no resistance.
- "Quick oven" for browning425-450F. Ten to fifteen minutes is enough to set the egg white and colour the tops; the filling is already cooked.
- The hinge: beat the potato hotRice or mash the flesh while it is still steaming and beat in the hot milk immediately. Cooled potato turns gluey under the beating and will not go light.
- Pack lightlyThe instruction is deliberate. Pressing the filling back in compacts it and undoes the beating; spoon it in loosely and rough up the surface so it browns unevenly.
- Egg white glazeOne egg white lightly slackened with a fork brushes six potatoes. It gives a thin gloss and a firmer crust than butter, which simply melts in.
- Red pepperThis means cayenne, not paprika or chilli flakes. A dash is a pinch dropped from the fingertips; it is a colour accent as much as a seasoning.
- Pepper measure1/3 teaspoon pepper and 1/3 cup milk are the original's own quantities and are workable; if you prefer round measures, a scant 1/2 teaspoon and a generous 1/4 cup are close.
- ServingSix whole shells, one per person, as the recipe's "cut thin slice from each" implies. Both first bake and browning can be split across a day: fill the shells, refrigerate, and add fifteen minutes to the finishing bake from cold.
Stuffed or twice-baked potatoes belong to a long line of American dishes built on the idea that a baked potato is a container as well as a vegetable, and they turn up in household cookery from the late nineteenth century onward under names like potatoes on the half shell. The appeal in a book of this kind is practical: the work is done in advance, the shells hold their shape on a crowded plate, and the finished dish arrives at the table looking composed rather than scooped. The parsley sprig and the dash of red pepper are period styling.