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Potatoes (Dash of pepper teaspoon)
Dash of pepper 1/2 teaspoon chopped parsley 1 tablespoon butter Melt the butter in a smooth frying pan and when hot add the other ingredients, well mixed together. Pack lightly into a layer of uniform thickness and cook slowly for twenty or thirty minutes. Fold over and serve. There should be a thick brown crust on the outside.
This page has come down to us with its ingredient list cut off mid-line — only the pepper, parsley and butter survive. What remains is clearly the method for a folded potato cake, the ancestor of the diner hash brown, and the technique is worth having even though the quantities are not.
- The missing ingredientsThe list begins partway through, so the amount of potato and salt is genuinely unknown. As a working guess only, around 1 lb of cooked or par-cooked potato, coarsely chopped or riced, with about 1/2 teaspoon salt, would suit the pepper, parsley and butter that survive; the original proportions cannot be recovered.
- A smooth frying panMost likely this means a pan with an unpitted cooking surface, such as a well-seasoned cast iron or heavy tinned skillet; a crust will tear on rough metal. A seasoned cast iron or a good nonstick pan does the same job now.
- Cook slowly is the hingeTwenty to thirty minutes over low heat is not a misprint. The point is to drive off moisture and build one continuous brown crust; raised heat gives you a scorched underside over a pale, wet interior.
- Pack lightlyPress the potato into an even layer but do not compact it. A tightly mashed cake steams from within and will not release from the pan in one piece.
- Do not disturb itLeave the cake alone while the crust forms. Poking or stirring breaks the crust as it sets and it will not re-knit.
- Fold overThe cake is folded in half like an omelette and slid onto the plate, browned side out. Loosen the whole edge with a thin spatula first.
- One tablespoon of butterThat is lean by modern habit for a half-hour cook. Butter solids also darken over that time; a mix of butter and a neutral oil, or clarified butter, holds up better without changing the flavour much.
The folded potato cake sits alongside an older idea: the frugal household habit of frying yesterday's boiled potatoes for breakfast. Some have connected it to the French pommes Anna tradition of pressing potato into a pan until it forms its own crust, though the lineage is a matter of speculation rather than documented descent. The truncated ingredient list here may reflect a page-break or a loss in transcription rather than anything deliberate. The insistence on "a thick brown crust" and on slow cooking reflects an era when a heavy skillet on a coal or wood range held low heat well, though such solid-fuel ranges were variable and needed tending — a condition modern gas and induction burners have to be coaxed into imitating.