Home › Vegetables › Creamed Potatoes (Cups boiled potatoes cup cream)
Creamed Potatoes (Cups boiled potatoes cup cream)
2 cups boiled potatoes 1 cup cream sauce Make the cream sauce thinner than usual by adding a little extra milk. Cut the potatoes into small cubes and mix them thoroughly with the same. Cook in a double boiler until the potatoes are thoroughly hot; add a little chopped parsley, if desired, and serve.
A two-ingredient dish that depends entirely on the sauce and on the state of the potatoes. The original assumes you have both cold boiled potatoes and a standing recipe for cream sauce on hand.
- The cream sauceIn a book of this period, "cream sauce" generally means a white sauce built on a roux of butter and flour in equal measure -- often about 2 tablespoons of each -- whisked with 1 cup of milk or thin cream. The instruction to make it thinner than usual means simply adding a little extra milk, as the text says; a quarter-cup more is about right, since the potatoes will take up some liquid as they heat.
- Season it yourselfNo salt or pepper is listed, which was normal shorthand. Salt the sauce properly before the potatoes go in; boiled potatoes are bland and a flat sauce cannot be rescued at the table.
- Cold potatoes are the pointCold potatoes help -- The recipe says only "boiled potatoes," but potatoes boiled ahead and cooled hold their shape in the sauce better than hot, freshly drained ones, which are softer and break up more readily. Cut them small, as directed -- roughly 1/2-inch dice works.
- Why the double boilerA cream sauce with starchy potatoes in it will catch and scorch on direct heat, and milk scalds easily. Over simmering water the contents stay below boiling, so they warm through gently. A heavy saucepan on very low heat with frequent stirring does the same job in less time.
- TimingFifteen to twenty minutes in the double boiler to bring cold potatoes fully hot. Stir gently and only occasionally, or the cubes break down.
- YieldTwo cups of potatoes and a cup of sauce serves three to four as a side dish.
Creamed vegetables were a workhorse of American home cookery well into the mid-twentieth century, and creamed potatoes in particular were a standard way of using the previous day's boiled potatoes. The white sauce behind it descends from French b he loose-leaf book it had been thoroughly domesticated into a familiar ratio: equal butter and flour, a cup of milk, thin for creaming and thick for binding croquettes. The optional chopped parsley is the whole of the garnish, which tells you how plainly this was meant to be eaten.