Baked
-INGREDIENTS.
Choose large potatoes, as much of a size POTATOES, TO BOIL. evaporate, and the potatoes, if a good sort, should be perfectly mealy and dry. Potatoes vary so much in quality and size that it is difficult to give the exact time for boiling; they should be attentively watched, and probed with a fork to ascertain when they are cooked. Send them to table quickly and very hot, and with an opening in the cover of the dish, that a portion of the steam may evaporate, and not fall back on the potatoes.
TIME. Moderate-sized old potatoes, 15 to 20 minutes after the water boils; large ones 1/2 hour to 35 minutes.
SEASONABLE all the year, but not good just before and whilst new potatoes are in season.
Note. To keep potatoes hot, after draining the water from them, put a folded cloth or flannel (kept for the purpose) on the top of them, keeping the saucepan-lid partially removed. This will absorb the moisture, and keep them hot some time without spoiling.
Potatoes, To Boil, in their Jackets. INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons.-10 or 12 potatoes; to each 1/2 gallon of water allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt. AVERAGE COST, 3d.
POTATOES, FRIED. and a small plate is placed by the side of each guest.
TIME.-Moderate-sized potatoes, with their skins on, 20 to 25 minutes after the water boils; large potatoes, 25 minutes to hour, or longer; 5 minutes to dry them.
SEASONABLE all the year, but not good just before and whilst new potatoes are in season.
What survives here is Mrs Beeton's method for plain boiled potatoes, both peeled and in their skins, with her timings and her trick for holding them hot. The hinge is the drying: potatoes drained and left to steam dry are mealy, potatoes left sitting in their own moisture are sodden.
- The dry-offAfter draining, return the pan to a low burner uncovered for a couple of minutes so the surface water flashes off. Beeton's folded cloth under a partly removed lid does the same job, absorbing steam rather than letting it condense back onto the potatoes.
- Half a gallon of water, one heaped tablespoon of saltThat is roughly 2 quarts to 1 tablespoon, a lighter hand than most modern boiling water. Increase to about a tablespoon per quart if you want the potatoes seasoned through rather than merely salted at the surface.
- Timings assume old potatoesFifteen to twenty minutes for medium peeled potatoes and up to 35 for large ones is still sound for a floury maincrop cut into even pieces. Waxy new potatoes cook faster and will never go mealy; Beeton's own seasonable note says only that these potatoes are not good just before and whilst new potatoes are in season.
- "A good sort"She means a floury variety: Russet, King Edward, Maris Piper, Idaho. Yukon Gold and red-skinned salad potatoes hold together but stay dense, so probe early and expect a different result.
- Size matters more than the clockChoosing potatoes of a size, as she instructs, is the whole reason her timings work. Mixed sizes in one pan give you collapsed small ones and raw centres in the large.
- ProbingA fork or thin skewer should meet no resistance at the centre. Cut one open if unsure; underdone potato has a faintly translucent core.
- Serving hot with the lid ajarSending them up with an opening in the dish cover is not fussiness. Trapped steam condenses and falls back on the potatoes, leaving the top layer sodden.
- YieldThe jacket version is given for five or six people at 10 to 12 potatoes, so allow two medium potatoes a head.
Boiled potatoes appear in Beeton with the seriousness a Victorian household gave to a food it ate at nearly every dinner: by the 1860s the potato was the cheap bulk of the British table, and getting it mealy rather than waterlogged was a mark of a competent cook. Her insistence on old potatoes over new reflects a seasonal supply that modern year-round imports have flattened out; before refrigeration and global shipping, the maincrop stored from autumn was starchy and floury by spring, while the first new potatoes of early summer were prized for a quite different, waxy quality. The note about a folded flannel kept for the purpose is a glimpse of a kitchen where dishes waited on the family's timetable, and where holding food hot without a warming drawer was a daily problem.