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Cooking Potatoes
The safe way to cook potatoes is to use two fires. First dig out a hole larger than needed to hold the potatoes-line it with small stones if they are available. Build a fire in the hole to heat the stones. When this fire dies down-put in the potatoes, cover them with damp earth-then on top of this build an 18-inch criss-cross fire and let it burn down. Start these potatoes an hour before you want them and cook other parts of the meal on the same fires.
This is a pit-roast, and the whole method rests on stored heat rather than flame: the stones and soil hold what the first fire gave them while the second fire works from above. A few details the text assumes you already know.
- Choose the stones carefullyUse dry, dense field stone. Avoid river-bed or otherwise water-logged rock and anything porous like sandstone or slate, which can hold enough trapped moisture to fracture sharply when heated.
- The first fire is not a quick jobHeating stone through takes a good deal of steady burning rather than a flare-up; the recipe gives no time for it, saying only to wait until the fire dies down. Rake the coals and ash aside or spread them thin before the potatoes go in, so the skins are not sitting directly on live embers.
- "Criss-cross fire"Sticks stacked in alternating layers at right angles, close to what is elsewhere called a log-cabin lay. The recipe's "18-inch" is unexplained and could mean height or width. A lay of this kind burns down evenly and leaves a broad bed of coals rather than a tall flame.
- Damp earth, and whyThe soil is insulation and a moisture seal, so the potatoes steam as much as bake. Damp, not wet or muddy. The recipe does not say how deep to cover them; too thick a layer will keep the top fire's heat from driving down.
- Wrap themModern practice is to wrap each potato in heavy foil before it goes into the pit. Unwrapped potatoes buried in soil come out gritty and the skins are usually a loss.
- Timing and testingThe stated hour is realistic for medium potatoes, but pit temperatures vary widely. Dig one out and push a skewer or thin knife through it; if there is any resistance at the centre, rebury and give it another 15 to 20 minutes.
- Potato typeA dry, starchy baking potato of even size gives the best result. Mixed sizes cook unevenly in a pit, where you cannot pull individual pieces easily.
- YieldReckon one medium to large potato per person and dig the hole with a few inches to spare all round, so nothing is pressed against hot stone.
- Putting the fire outA pit fire holds heat for hours after the flames are gone. Drown the coals, stir, and drown again before you leave the site, and scatter the stones once they are cold.
Pit cooking of this kind is very old and widely distributed, from the Hawaiian imu and the Maori hangi to the bean-holes of New England logging camps, all working on the same principle: heat rock, bury food, let the ground do the rest. This two-fire version, with a bed of stones below and a criss-cross fire above, reads like the American camp-craft manuals, and the instruction to "cook other parts of the meal on the same fires" fits that kind of writing, where getting several jobs out of one fire was part of the point.