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Potato Cheesecakes
811. Boil six ounces of potatoes, and four ounces of lemon peel; beat the latter in a marble mortar with four ounces of sugar; then add the potatoes, beaten, and four ounces of butter melted in a little cream. When well mixed, let it stand to grow cold. Put puff-paste in pattypans, and rather more than half fill them. Bake in a quick oven half an hour, sifting some double-refined sugar on them when going to the oven. This quantity will make a dozen.
An eighteenth-century style tartlet filling in which potato stands in for curd cheese, sharpened with a large quantity of lemon peel. It contains no cheese and no eggs, so texture depends entirely on how finely the potato is worked.
- The hinge: work the potato smooth while hotAny lump or fibre stays put, since there is no egg to bind or set the mixture. Press the boiled potato through a ricer or fine sieve straight from the pan, then beat it into the pounded peel and sugar.
- Choose a floury potatoA mealy baking type (Maris Piper, russet) breaks down dry and light. Waxy salad potatoes turn gluey under beating and will make the filling heavy.
- Four ounces of lemon peelThat is the pared zest and pith of roughly four to six lemons, and it is meant to be boiled until tender before pounding, otherwise it stays bitter and stringy. Simmer the peel in two or three changes of water, drain well, and pound with the sugar to a paste; a food processor does the job of the marble mortar.
- Double-refined sugarThe whitest, finest sugar of the period. Use caster sugar for the mixture and icing sugar for the dusting that goes on before baking.
- PattypansSmall shallow tartlet or bun tins, about 2 to 2 1/2 inches across, not muffin cups. Line them with puff pastry and fill a little over halfway, as instructed, since the filling rises slightly and the pastry lifts underneath.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400-425F (200-220C). At that heat small tartlets may well be done before the stated half hour, perhaps in 20-25 minutes; look for puffed, well-coloured pastry and a set, lightly browned surface, and pull them before the sugar dusting scorches.
- Butter and creamFour ounces of butter to six ounces of potato is a rich ratio by modern taste. Melt it into just enough cream to loosen the mixture, two to three tablespoons, and let the filling cool completely before it goes into raw pastry.
- Yield and servingTwelve small tartlets, as stated. Best eaten the day they are baked, barely warm; refrigeration firms the potato and dulls the lemon.
"Cheesecake" in British cookery long meant any small rich tartlet baked in pastry, and by the eighteenth century the curd was often replaced altogether -- lemon cheesecakes, almond cheesecakes and potato cheesecakes all appear in the household manuals without a scrap of cheese between them. Boiled potato served as a cheap, bland carrier for expensive flavourings, much as it does in potato pudding. What is being paid for here is the four ounces of lemon peel and the double-refined sugar, both costly; the potato simply carries them. Recipes of this type recur with little variation across eighteenth- and nineteenth-century printed books.