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Potatoes, A German Method of Cooking
INGREDIENTS. -8 to 10 middling-sized potatoes, 3 oz. of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, 1/2 pint of broth, 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Put the butter and flour into a stewpan; stir over the fire until the butter is of a nice brown colour, and add the broth and vinegar; peel and cut the potatoes into long thin slices, lay them in the gravy, and let them simmer gently until tender, which will be in from 10 to 15 minutes, and serve very hot. A laurel-leaf simmered with the potatoes is an improvement.
TIME.-10 to 15 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Potatoes à la Maître d'Hôtel.
INGREDIENTS.-Potatoes, salt and water; to every 6 potatoes allow 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, 2 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste, 4 tablespoonfuls of gravy, 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon-juice.
Wash the potatoes clean, and boil them in salt and water; when they are done, drain them, let them cool; then peel and cut the potatoes into thick slices: if these are too thin, they will break in the sauce.
Put the butter into a stewpan with the pepper, salt, gravy and parsley; mix these ingredients well together, put in the potatoes, shake them two or three times, that they may be well covered with the sauce, and. when quite hot through, squeeze in the lemon-juice, and serve.
TIME. to hour to boil the potatoes; 10 minutes for them to heat in the sauce.
SEASONABLE all the year.
Potatoes, Mashed.
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-3 lbs. of potatoes, 2 oz. of butter, 3 tablespoonfuls of milk, salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, 6d.
Boil the potatoes in their skins; when done, drain them, and let them get thoroughly dry by the side of the fire; then peel them, and, as they are peeled, put them into a clean saucepan, and with a large fork beat them to a light paste; add butter, milk and salt in the above proportion, and stir all the POTATOES, COLD.
When ingredients well over the fire. thoroughly hot, dish them lightly, and draw the fork backwards over the potatoes to make the surface rough, and serve.
When dressed in this manner, they may be browned at the top with a salamander, or before the fire. Some cooks press the potatoes into moulds, then turn them out, and brown them in the oven: this is a pretty mode of serving, but it makes them heavy.
In whatever way they are sent to table, care must be taken to have them quite free from lumps.
TIME. From to hour to boil the potatoes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Potatoes, Very Thin-mashed, or Purée de Pommes de Terre. - INGREDIENTS.-To every lb. of mashed potatoes allow 1/4 pint of good broth or stock, 2 oz. of butter.
Boil the potatoes, well drain them, and pound them smoothly in a mortar, or beat them up with a fork; add the stock or broth, and rub the potatoes through a sieve.
Put the purée into a very clean saucepan with the butter; stir it well over the fire until thoroughly hot, and it will then be ready to serve. A purée should be rather thinner than mashed potatoes, and is a delicious accompaniment to delicatelybroiled mutton cutlets. Cream or milk may be substituted for the broth when the latter is not at hand. A casserole of potatoes, which is often used for ragoûts instead of rice, is made by mashing potatoes rather thickly, placing them on a dish, and making an opening in the centre. After having browned the potatoes in the oven, the dish should be wiped clean, and the ragoût or fricassée poured in.
TIME.-About 1/2 hour to boil the potatoes ; 6 or 7 minutes to warm the purée.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Four related potato dishes run together here, all built on the same idea: boil or simmer, then finish in a sauce. The first is a brown roux sharpened with vinegar, and the browning of that roux is what makes it.
- Brown the roux properlyButter and flour need six to ten minutes over moderate heat to reach a nutty brown, and the pan should be stirred continuously. Stop at pale blond and the dish tastes of raw flour; push it to dark brown and it turns bitter and loses thickening power.
- Quantities in modern termsFor the German method: 3 oz butter is 85 g (about 6 tablespoons), 1/2 pint of broth in British measure is 10 fl oz or 1 1/4 US cups. Eight to ten middling potatoes is roughly 2 lb, serving four.
- Cutting the potatoesThe slices go in raw and cook through in the gravy, so keep them thin and even, about 1/8 inch. Ten to fifteen minutes is realistic only at that thickness; thicker slices need longer and will thicken the sauce further as their starch leaches out.
- Laurel-leafA bay leaf. One is plenty for this quantity, and it should come out before serving.
- VinegarTwo tablespoons into 10 fl oz of broth is assertive. A plain malt or cider vinegar suits the brown roux; wine vinegar works but reads sharper. Add it with the broth as directed so it has time to soften.
- Maitre d'hotel potatoesThe instruction to cut thick slices is the hinge. Boiled potatoes cooled and cut thin will collapse when shaken in the butter sauce; half-inch rounds hold. The lemon juice goes in off the boil at the last moment.
- Mashed potatoes3 lb of potatoes with only 2 oz butter and 3 tablespoons of milk gives a stiff, dry mash by current taste. Drying the boiled potatoes by the fire before mashing is sound practice and worth keeping: a few minutes in the dry pan over low heat drives off water and gives a lighter result.
- Salamander and browningThe salamander was an iron plate heated red and held over the surface. An overhead broiler set high for two or three minutes does the same job.
- "A casserole of potatoes"Not a baking dish. Here it means a wall of mashed potato shaped on a serving dish with a hollow in the middle, browned in the oven, then filled with a ragout. The original gives no temperature; a hot oven, watched, is enough to colour the surface without drying the whole mound.
- Boiling timesThe original's boiling times have lost their fractions. Whole potatoes in their skins take roughly 20 to 30 minutes depending on size; test with a skewer rather than the clock.
Vinegar-sharpened potatoes in a brown sauce are a recognisably German and Austrian idiom — the same sweet-sour instinct that produces Kartoffelsalat dressed with hot broth and vinegar rather than mayonnaise, and the browned Mehlschwitze that underpins much German gravy. Mrs Beeton's book habitually files such things under a national label, and the run of potato entries here shows how a mid-Victorian kitchen was expected to think about the vegetable: not one dish but a dozen small variations, so a cook could match the treatment to whatever meat was going out with it.