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Potatoes for Salad
Select potatoes of uniform size; wash and remove the eyes. Place potatoes in kettle and cover with boiling water. Add one tablespoon of salt for each quart of water. Boil five minutes if potatoes are small, ten if large. Place in cooker for two hours. Drain and allow to cool uncovered.
This is a fuel-saving method rather than a dish: the potatoes get a short boil on the stove, then finish in the retained heat of an insulated cooker. Everything hinges on the cooker holding its temperature, so the timings mean little unless you reproduce that.
- What a fireless cooker wasAn insulated box, packed with hay, felt or mineral wool, sometimes with preheated soapstone or iron discs beneath the kettle. Food came to a boil on the range and then coasted for hours on stored heat. A slow cooker is not the same thing, since it keeps adding heat; the nearest modern equivalents are a vacuum thermal cooker or a heavy Dutch oven brought to a full boil, lidded, and wrapped in towels inside a closed cooler.
- If you have no cookerBoil small potatoes 15-20 minutes, large ones 25-35, until a skewer slides through with no resistance at the centre. The two-hour hold exists only to avoid burning fuel; it buys nothing in flavour.
- SaltOne tablespoon per quart of water is about 18 g per litre, which is a well-salted boil by modern standards and right for potatoes that will be dressed cold. Reduce it if you are using salted stock or a heavily seasoned dressing later.
- Skins onNote that the potatoes are only washed and eyed, not peeled. Cooking in the skin keeps them from waterlogging; peel while still warm if you want them naked, or leave the skins on for a rustic salad.
- Choose a waxy potatoThe book assumes uniform size so everything cooks alike, but variety matters as much. Red-skinned, fingerling or other waxy potatoes hold their edges through slicing and dressing; a floury baking potato will crumble, especially after a long soak in a warm cooker.
- Cooling uncovered is the pointDraining and cooling in open air lets surface moisture steam off, so the slices stay dry-surfaced and absorb dressing instead of shedding it. A lid traps steam and gives you gummy, waterlogged potatoes.
- Dress while warmNot in the original, but standard practice: potatoes take up vinegar or vinaigrette far better at blood heat than cold from the refrigerator. Dress lightly while warm, then add mayonnaise once fully cool if the salad calls for it.
- YieldReckon about 1/3 lb of potatoes per person for a side salad, so 2 lb serves six.
Fireless cookery had a brief, intense vogue in American and British kitchens either side of the First World War, and this section of the book belongs squarely to it. The principle came from the hay box or so-called Norwegian kitchen, in which a boiling pot was buried in insulation and left to finish itself; commercial versions with soapstone heat discs were sold widely from the early 1900s, and household-economy writers pushed them hard as a way to cut coal and gas bills and to keep a summer kitchen cool. Recipes written for them read oddly today because the instructions are split in two: a few minutes of real fire, then hours of nothing at all. That such a plain preparation as salad potatoes was given its own entry shows how much the method changed timing for every dish in the house.