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Scalloped Potatoes
6 medium-sized potatoes 2 tablespoons flour 4 tablespoons butter Milk Salt and pepper Pare raw potatoes and cut them into thin slices. Place in a baking-dish a layer of the potato one inch deep, season with salt and pepper, sprinkle a portion of the flour over each layer, add a part of the butter or butter substitute in bits. Then add another layer of the potato and seasoning, as before, and continue until the required amount is used. It is advisable not to have more than two or three layers because of difficulty in cooking. Add milk until it can be seen between the slices of potato, cover and bake one and one-fourth hour, or until potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork, removing the cover during the last fifteen minutes to brown the top. Serve from the baking-dish.
A plain layered potato gratin from the era when recipes assumed the cook knew her own stove. The two things left unstated are the oven temperature and the amount of milk.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Bake at 350F; the long 1 1/4-hour time is consistent with a moderate oven rather than a hot one. If the top is browning before the potatoes soften, drop to 325F and re-cover.
- How much milkThe recipe measures by eye: pour until milk is visible between the slices. For six medium potatoes in a 2-quart dish that works out to roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups. Whole milk sets better than skim, and half milk, half cream is richer still.
- Slice thickness is the hinge"Thin slices" means about 1/8 inch, even throughout. Uneven slices are the usual reason scalloped potatoes come out simultaneously scorched and crunchy; a mandoline or the slicing disc of a food processor solves it.
- Why only two or three layersThe warning about difficulty in cooking is sound. A deep dish insulates its own centre, and the flour-thickened milk cannot circulate. Use a wide shallow baking dish and keep to the recipe's own limit: two or three one-inch layers, so no more than about 3 inches total.
- "Butter substitute"In the early twentieth century this meant oleomargarine or a vegetable shortening. Butter is the better choice now; 4 tablespoons for six potatoes is generous and can be reduced to 3 without harm.
- Starchy potatoesRussets or other floury potatoes release starch that helps the milk thicken alongside the flour. Waxy red or new potatoes hold their shape but leave a thinner sauce.
- CurdlingBaked milk can break if it gets too hot. Keeping the dish covered until the last fifteen minutes, as directed, helps hold the heat down, and the flour helps stabilise the milk; uncover only for the final 15 minutes of browning.
- YieldServes four to six as a side dish. It reheats well, covered, at 325F.
Scalloped dishes are often said to take their name from the old English collop, a slice of meat; the competing and better-attested derivation is from the scallop shell in which such dishes were once baked and served. Either way, by the eighteenth century "scallop" had come to mean anything sliced and baked in a sauce or crumbs. Potatoes layered with butter, flour and milk became a staple American household vegetable, the ingredients being cheap and always at hand and the dish able to sit in the oven unattended alongside a roast. The Delineator was a Butterick fashion magazine with a substantial domestic-science department, and its recipe collections reflect the early-twentieth-century push to standardise home cooking: note the practical warning against deep layers and the instruction to serve from the baking dish, both aimed at a cook working without help and without a warming oven. The absence of a stated temperature is itself a period marker, from the years when gas ranges with thermostats were still displacing coal and wood stoves judged by hand.