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Stuffed Potatoes
Use large potatoes of uniform size and wash and scrub them well. When baked, cut off a piece lengthwise and scoop out the inside of the potato.
Mash this with margarine and milk.
Add any minced cooked meat or cooked flaked fish, anchovy, or the remains of any sauce, such as egg sauce, shrimp sauce or parsley sauce. If you have no sauce, a little more milk and margarine may be used. Replace the mixture in the potato and cover with the pieces which have been previously removed, reheat and serve hot.
A frugal way of turning yesterday's fish, meat or leftover sauce into a full supper dish. The original assumes you already know how to bake a potato, so the numbers are missing.
- Baking the potatoesLarge baking potatoes (russets, about 10-12 oz each) take 50-60 minutes at 425F, pricked and set directly on the rack. They must be fully soft or the flesh will not mash smoothly.
- Cutting the lidTake the slice off the flat side lengthwise so the potato sits steady, and leave a shell about a quarter inch thick. Any thinner and it will collapse when refilled.
- MargarineIn the period this book comes from, margarine was the cheap everyday fat and butter the luxury. Butter is the better choice now; the quantity is left to judgement, but roughly 1 tbsp butter and 2-3 tbsp warm milk per potato gives a mash that holds its shape.
- The leftover sauceEgg, shrimp and parsley sauce are all white sauces, so they thin and enrich the mash in the same way the milk does. Use no more than a couple of tablespoons per potato or the filling will slump.
- SeasoningNone is specified here. Salt, pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or a squeeze of lemon with fish make the difference between a filling and a paste.
- Reheating20-25 minutes at 400F. Because cooked meat or fish is being reheated, take the centre to 165F; adding cold leftovers to warm potato leaves the middle lukewarm otherwise.
- Browning the topThe original simply covers the filling with the cut lid. Leaving the lids off and running the tops under the grill for two or three minutes, with a little grated cheese if you like, gives a better surface.
- YieldOne potato per person as a light main course with a salad, or half a potato as a side.
Stuffed baked potatoes belong to the long tradition of British cookery-book economy: a dish whose real subject is the cold remains in the larder rather than any fixed set of ingredients. The tell here is the list of fillings — egg sauce, shrimp sauce, parsley sauce are exactly the sauces served the day before with boiled fish, and the recipe is a way of finishing them off. The specification of margarine rather than butter suggests a household in which margarine was the ordinary fat, cheaper and often easier to obtain than butter, though that was true across a long stretch of years rather than any one moment. The governing virtue of such books was thrift: the recipes assume a small kitchen, a single oven and a strong reluctance to throw anything away.