Home › Potato Pudding with Meat › Potato Pudding with Meat
Potato Pudding with Meat
788. Boil them till fit to mash, rub through a colander, and make into a thick batter with milk and two eggs; lay some seasoned steaks in a dish, then some batter, and over the last layer put the remainder of the batter; bake a fine brown.
A plain layered bake: mashed potato thinned to a batter, poured over seasoned steaks and browned. The instructions assume a cook who already knows the proportions, so a few numbers help.
- Quantities to work fromAbout 2 lb floury potatoes (Maris Piper, russet), 1/2 to 3/4 cup milk and the two eggs give a batter that pours slowly but still holds a shape. Add the milk gradually; potato varieties absorb very differently.
- Rub through a colanderThis is the period method for a lump-free purée, and it works better with a coarse sieve or a ricer. Avoid a food processor, which turns boiled potato to glue.
- The meat is the hingeSteaks laid raw between layers of batter will not brown or tenderise inside a sealed pudding. Use thin slices of braising beef browned first in a pan, or leftover cooked beef with a spoonful or two of gravy, so the filling is already tender when the crust colours.
- SeasoningThe recipe leaves "seasoned" undefined; salt and pepper are the safe reading, and a little grated onion or a pinch of mace would not be out of keeping. Season the potato batter as well; unsalted mashed potato tastes of nothing under a brown top.
- OvenBake at 375-400F (190-200C) for 40 to 50 minutes, until the surface is set and well coloured. If the top pales, finish under a hot grill for a few minutes rather than extending the bake and drying the meat.
- DishA shallow buttered pie dish of about 8 by 10 inches suits this quantity. Deep dishes leave the centre wet and the top overcooked.
- YieldServes four as a main course with a green vegetable or pickles.
Potato puddings sit in a long English line of "puddings" that are not sweet and not boiled in a cloth: a starchy batter baked in a dish with meat under it, broadly the same family idea as Yorkshire pudding under beef or the batter-and-mutton dishes of the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century the potato was well established as cheap bulk on the British table, and cookery books carried numerous ways of stretching a small amount of steak with it. The instruction to "bake a fine brown" rather than to bake for a stated time is characteristic of a period when oven heat was not measured, and a cook judged doneness by colour and smell.