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Stuffed Potatoes
Bake 4 large potatoes. Cut in half lengthwise and, without breaking skins, scoop out insides and mash; add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, 1 teaspoon melted butter and mix with fork. Return to shells, put a few drops milk on top; rough with fork; sprinkle with paprika. Place in oven until brown.
A straightforward twice-baked potato, written in the terse style of a promotional pamphlet. The original assumes you know what a hot oven looks like, so the numbers are worth filling in.
- Oven temperaturesBake the potatoes at 425F for 45-60 minutes, until a skewer meets no resistance. For the second, browning bake, the same heat works, or 450F for 10-15 minutes if you want colour quickly.
- Scoop while hot, mash while hotterThe hinge of the dish. Potato flesh mashes smooth only while steaming; let the halves cool and you get a gluey, lumpy filling. Handle them in a towel and work fast.
- Leave a wallThe recipe only says "without breaking skins," i.e. don't tear the shells. In practice leaving a little flesh attached, say around 1/4 inch, helps; scraped bare, the skins slump and tear when refilled.
- Butter is sparse by modern tasteOne teaspoon of melted butter for four potatoes is very little. A tablespoon or two, plus a splash of warm milk or cream worked into the mash, gives a richer texture.
- The milk on topThe few drops of milk are too little to moisten the filling; on the surface they will help it colour. Brushing the tops with melted butter does the same job more reliably.
- Rough with a forkThe raised ridges catch the heat and colour faster than a smooth top. Drag the tines across before the paprika goes on.
- YieldFour potatoes make eight halves, which serves four as a side dish.
- Make-aheadThe filled halves hold in the refrigerator for a day. Bring them to room temperature before the browning bake, or add ten minutes to the time.
Stuffed or twice-baked potatoes turn up in American and British cookery from the late nineteenth century onward. The dish belongs to a genre of made-over vegetables the period was fond of: something plain, dressed up with parsley and a dusting of paprika, presentable enough for company without additional expense. Paprika was a fashionable garnish in American cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s, largely for its colour against pale food. If the recipe comes from a leavening manufacturer's booklet, that would be characteristic of the genre: the product was the reason for publishing, but such volumes were padded out into general household manuals covering soups, vegetables and puddings.